"You look as if you'd seen a ghost, old girl," smiled her brother facetiously. "What's up?" "I've been--they don't want----" Hal halted, aghast. "You don't mean to say they've asked you to quit?" "Yes." The boy's eyes blazed. "It's Corcoran, the cur! He's done it to get back at me for what I said to him." "You think so?" "Sure!" "But why choose me? I had nothing to do with the squabble." "That's just the point. He's smart enough to know it would hit me a darn sight harder to have you lose your job than to lose my own," blustered her brother wrathfully. "I wish I was sure it was only that." "Why?" "Because then I wouldn't care so much. I should know there was nothing the matter with my work." "Of course there isn't. You're one of the best operators they've got in the mill. Hines, one of the bosses, told me so only the other day." "Really?" The girl's face brightened. "Why didn't you tell me?" "Oh, I don't know. Forgot it, I guess," smiled Hal. It was not his way to pass on compliments. Had the criticism been adverse he would have told it quickly enough. "Well, I'm awfully glad he said so." "Yes, it was very decent of him. Everybody knows though that you're a fine worker--even old Corcoran himself, I'll be bound, although he wouldn't admit it. You're quick, careful, prompt and never absent. What else do they want? Oh, Corcoran was behind this, all right. It wasn't your work sacked you. It was plain spite." "I'm thankful for that!" sighed Louise. "I'm not. It makes me hot," burst out Hal. "Still, it is better than losing your place because your work was so poor you couldn't hold the job," smiled the girl. "I can't see it that way. This is just low down and unfair." "But I don't mind that. I know I wasn't to blame." "You bet you weren't. I wish I had Corcoran here. I'd shake the daylights out of him." "Whose daylights are going to be shaken out now?" inquired a laughing voice, and the brother and sister turned to see Carl McGregor beside them. "Old Corcoran up at the works," snarled Hal. "He's given Louise the sack!" Carl did not speak. He knew only too well how genuine was this disaster. In the sympathetic silence that followed the three young persons seemed to draw closer together. "It isn't as if Loulie had done anything to deserve such a slam," Hal suddenly declared. "He's just taking out his spite on me and he's chosen this means of doing it. To light on a woman! I'd a hundred times rather he'd shipped me. But it's like him." Moodily the three walked on. "Of course, I must get some other place right away," Louise said presently, as if thinking aloud. "I don't know just what. I've never worked anywhere but in the mills and I have no other trade. To be turned away from Davis and Coulter won't be much of a recommendation for me either, I'm afraid." "Oh, you can get a hundred jobs," announced Hal, with a confidence he did not feel. "Don't you fret."