When, after sleeping on it for several nights, I finally decided to follow my friend’s advice, I felt sure Mrs. Howard would refuse to reimburse me. I itemized the expenditures. She would write me that she was in no way responsible for my having to buy three boxes, nor for my paying a twenty-five-cent tip. The amount I had paid for the cartage and storage of my goods, she would insist, I felt sure, was none of her business. She would protest that her advertisement was in good faith, and as she had already paid the wages due me for two days, and my railroad ticket to and from New York, she would pay me no more. Tuesday morning, my second day in the loan department of the T. Z. Trust Company, as I was leaving the rooming-house I met the postman on the steps, and he handed me Mrs. Howard’s reply. That reply now lies before me. It is written in long hand on the official paper of Rodman Hall. In the copy that follows only the proper names have been changed. “Rodman Hall, June 25, 1917. “DEAR MISS PORTER: “I agree with you that I made a mistake in trying to give this work to a gentlewoman. It will never turn out as I had hoped it would. Almost every day some one comes to me for help and the only work I have I offer. “Dormitory work and dish-washing, it is true, is not what gentlewomen would select as a general thing to do, yet if one should decide to do it rather than be out of work, I feel sure the duties would be well performed. “I am writing Mrs. Jones, the assistant secretary, to send you a check for $4.37. Yours truly, W. C. HOWARD.” On the Subway on my way down town again I gave this letter its first reading. It not only greatly surprised me, but it greatly puzzled me. On rereading it an exclamation burst from my lips. Any one reading her letter would imagine that I had complained of the character of the work assigned me—dormitory work and dish-washing. Also, that out of work I had appealed to her for help. If she received appeals for help “almost every day,” why was it necessary for her to advertise in the help-wanted columns? During that winter and spring Alice and I had noticed her advertisement fully one dozen times. Some day I shall frame this letter of Mrs. Howard’s together with her advertisement and the two typewritten pages of legal foolscap, the schedule of work. CHAPTER X TRUSTED WITH BILLIONS, PAID IN MILLS When discussing with my Y. W. C. A. friend my experiences at the Rodman Hall, she said: “Why don’t you give our employment department a trial? I believe you’d have a wider choice. Besides, you might help the Association a lot—reporting conditions at the places where you work.”