How mountainous our troubles grow when we brood over them.

How they dwindle into little ant-heaps when we relate them to another.

Richard talked in his frank, healthy way to the girl, and it was not long until she told him the simple, pathetic story of her life.

Her name was Dido Morgan, she said. She was a country girl, the only child of a village doctor, who lived in comfort but died penniless. Her mother died at her birth. She had been raised well, and when reduced to poverty she was too proud to go to work in her native village, so after her father was buried she came to New York.

She soon found that without experience and references she could not get any desirable work in New York. When all other things failed, she, at last, in desperation, applied for and obtained a position in a paper-box factory. She was fortunate enough to learn the work[Page 69] rapidly, and in a few months was able to earn as much as the best workers. She rented a little room on the top floor of a large tenement-house, where she slept and cooked her food. Every week she managed to save a little out of her scant earnings.

[Page 69]

One day a girl who worked at the same table with Dido, and who had for a long time been her friend, fainted. The girls crowded around them as Dido knelt on the floor to bathe the sick girl’s head and rub her hands.

“Aha! Away from yer tables durin’ work hours. I’ll pay yer fer this, I’ll dock every one of you,” yelled the foreman, who at this instant entered the workroom.

The girls, frightened, crept quietly back to their work, but Dido still continued to bathe the girl’s head.

“Here, you daisy on the floor, you’ll disobey me, hey? I’ll dock yer twice,” brutally[Page 70] spoke the foreman as he caught a glimpse of Dido’s head across the table.

[Page 70]

She looked at him with scorn. If glances could kill, he would have died at her feet. Still, she managed to say, quietly:

“Maggie Williams has fainted.”

“And because a girl faints must all the shop stop work and disobey rules, eh? I’ll pay yer for this. I’ll teach yer,” he vowed, as he quitted the room.

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