“You darned little hypocrite!” she cried. “Very well, I _will_ walk, if it takes me all day.” She wasn’t even sure of the way. She strode doggedly along in the dust and the scorching sun, furious and defiant, for more than two hours. “I’ll walk back and forth every day,” she said to herself, “if it kills me. I won’t give in to her. She always gets her own way. Not this time, though. I’ll wait till I get my first pay, and then I’ll hire someone. I won’t give up this job!” Twelve o’clock came. “You’re a stranger here,” said Mr. Petersen, “perhaps you don’t know where to go for lunch. If you’d do me the honour, this first day----” She was not quite sure what was the proper course for a business woman, but she knew that Mr. Petersen was absolutely “all right,” and to be trusted, so she accepted, and went up the street to the Eagle House with him. The Eagle House was a fly-blown and extraordinarily dingy hotel patronised by travelling salesmen; the food was horrible but the atmosphere impeccably respectable. Frances was delighted with it. Never before had she felt so adult, so independent. She was sure that Mr. Petersen took her seriously, judged her upon her merits as an individual and not as a Defoe or as a young girl--not as a female at all. She liked him! She remembered what Minnie had said about him and rejected it all. “Common,” “presumptuous,” “thick-skinned”; snobbish nonsense, all that! They walked back to the office and spent a very agreeable afternoon there. He explained the work to her, and was pleased by the quickness with which she grasped his explanations. He saw that she would soon be really very useful. She was not only intelligent and ambitious, but she had that remarkable feminine loyalty, that willingness to use all her powers in behalf of some one else, that is the curse and the glory of her sex. She never viewed Mr. Petersen as an ambitious young man would have done, as a stepping stone in her own career; she was genuinely concerned with how she could help Mr. Petersen with Mr. Petersen’s business. Five o’clock came very soon, she thought. Mr. Petersen looked at the clock and closed his desk. “Closing time!” he said cheerfully, “I hope your first day in business hasn’t----” He stopped short because her face had changed so suddenly. She turned pale as he was speaking. “Oh!” she said, with a gasp. “What’s the matter?” he asked, anxiously. “Are you ill?” “No--only--I’d forgotten.... Is there a short cut?” Even her fine courage faltered at the prospect of once more walking those five dusty miles; it really appalled her. Yet, with a quite empty pocketbook, what could she do? “A short cut?” he repeated, puzzled. “But--you don’t mean to say you expect to walk home?” “I’ve got to!” “Wait a bit!... I’ve a nice little trap in my stable. I’ll be back in ten minutes to fetch you. No; I shan’t listen to you. It’s out of the question, walking back.”