words about face creams; but Clara Seeley discerned that she was interested in more than cosmetics; and Marjorie liked her for her discernment and the way she showed it when gradually, as though both were interested in powders and cold creams, Clara Seeley drew her off to a quiet part of the store.
"What's the matter?" Clara demanded then practically and directly. "Say, was I makin' some play I couldn't realize from my side of the window? Something you sort-a want to tell me? If that's so, shoot; I want to know; you can't hurt my feelin's."
"Oh, no," Marjorie denied.
"Then it must be somethin' 'bout yourself. Say, you're down here without carfare; or the bottom's dropped out the family safe-deposit box and father can't put up no more margins and you're lookin' over demonstratin' as a job."
"That's nearer it," Marjorie confessed, liking this girl for her warmth as well as her quickness. And she thought as they stood there and talked, if she required at present a home under conditions new and different, here surely was a girl about as opposite as possible to herself; yet here was a girl who, if directness of eyes on yours and steadiness of lip meant anything, was straight as any girl Marjorie Hale knew.
When Marjorie imagined any of her own friends standing, as she had stood, in Mrs. Russell's flat and later in Rinderfeld's office, asking why her father had done as he had, Marjorie could imagine them only stunned as she had been, and she could imagine Rinderfeld treating them only as he had treated her. But she could not imagine this Clara Seeley as so stunned, or Rinderfeld or any other man treating her like a child. Marjorie had never before thought what dis-
