her father's power to send back the skill in her finger-tips, to refuse to let her keep the hard-earned knowledge of dots and lines and curves.
She was so afraid of the reckoning which she knew was awaiting her around the next corner, or the next, or the next, that in the meantime she exerted herself to please her father in every way she knew how. She laughed with her sisters at his slurs at women; she was careful to make no requests that might annoy him; she gave him no occasion to speak even harshly to her. Marcus's daily late afternoon frolic with his batch of girls continued in sweet and even tenor.
One day in mid-June, after Ada had been studying stenography for nearly a year, a request came to the business college from a real-estate and insurance office for a typist to help out during the unexpected absence of one of the regular office girls. Could some one be sent down within an hour or so?
"Miss Belden, would you like to try this place?" one of the instructors abruptly asked, slipping her hand over the receiver as she spoke. "You were ready for a position a month ago. Better try it."
Ada flushed. "Do you think I could?" she gasped.
"Of course you can. Yes," she called into
