Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/73

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At the Close of the Second Day

then had been a wholly different thing from this gnawing sensation that was so new—and so terrible. She discovered with alarm that she was growing faint. That last interview with the landlady had not been a pleasant experience for a proud woman.

"She seemed annoyed because I have n't any money," said the girl to herself, drearily. "I'm quite sure she's not so acutely inconvenienced by it as I am."

She looked around the room in the vain effort to discover something of her own that had not yet been pawned. There was nothing. The trifles adapted to that sort of business negotiation had gone one by one during a "hard luck period," of which she had heard her professional friends speak but which she had never thought to experience herself. When she had unexpectedly lost her position on "The Globe," and the "hard luck period" began, she had at first rather enjoyed the novelty. It was interesting to speculate as to how long her money would last. It had been interesting, and "developing, too," she told herself, to pawn her belongings when the money was gone, and to live on two

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