“That’s Mrs. Howard,” the voice of the little organist told me as she developed from the shadow beyond the policeman. “She was taken sick while at work, this morning—they sent her home in a cab. When I got a doctor he said she must go at once to a hospital. She died as the stretcher-bearers were bringing her down the stairs. She has to remain here on the floor until the coroner comes.” “Heart trouble?” I asked. “Yes. The doctor said it was brought on by overwork and underfeeding.” The little organist’s voice trembled, and she gulped down a sob as she added: “And on Christmas Eve, too!” “And in a Christian country,” I agreed. “In the richest city in the world.” That Christmas was the first holiday I ever really appreciated. Remaining in bed the entire day I subsisted on a loaf of stale bread and two specked apples, both left-overs of the hat-trimmer, who had gone to spend a week with her brother in Jersey. During the second week in January Mr. Spencer again brought up the question of my becoming a regular saleswoman in the premium station. Nora thought he planned to make me head of stock at a near-by counter. Forced to give him a definite answer, I told him that conditions at my home made it necessary for me to leave New York—I would give up my job at the end of that week. On my telling him good-by he assured me that he would always have an opening for me whenever I chose to return. Alice and the hat-trimmer were the only persons who knew that I had signed a contract with the Sea Foam Hotel, a large hotel at a well-known resort. I was to serve as waitress. CHAPTER V HUMAN COOTIES When planning my adventure as Polly Preston, the heroine of my proposed novel, the idea of including domestic service did not occur to me. It was Alice who first caused me to consider such an experience. Telling why she had given up her position in the institution for defective children, she had exclaimed: “I was engaged as a teacher—the people at college all understood I was to have a teacher’s position. After they got me there they treated me like a servant.” Thinking over this incident, I wondered how it felt to be treated as a servant. Were well-bred people really so disagreeable to those who served them? How had the servants at home looked upon our household? Was it possible that they found fault with my mother’s treatment of them? If so, in what particular had she failed?