They did, dear people, they did. In the basement. In the kitchen ware. All day long I was learning to sell clothespins and eggbeaters and wringers and cookie cutters and I wish you could see my hands! I wonder if they'd consider me up stage if I wore gloves? I'd better not chance it. They were all ever so decent about helping me. The floorwalker was especially kind. (I can see you fling up your head like a warhorse at the smell of powder, Emma Ellis, but he's a meek young thing who likes to burble of his baby.) But I'm a woman of my word and this chronicle is faithful and true. Coming home on the L, I saw the beamish Buffalo, and he saw me and plunged to me through the crowd, saying gleefully, "Say, girlie, I've thought of you a million times, and I--say, listen, I got in awful Dutch with the wife about you, and she said"--but I slipped nimbly into my local and the door slapped shut between us. Your heroines, Emma, were not so light on their feet. But I honestly felt mean,--he did look so friendly and fat. I'm to have eight a week in my basement. Mrs. Mussel gets five of it and the rest I may waste in riotous living. Good night! JANE. _Three Nights Later._ DEAR M.D. AND E.E., Please dash downtown and have a million service medals struck off and then rush around and pin them on all the shop girls in the world! The unutterable weariness--the aching, burning, sagging, sickening, faint _tiredness_! If ever again, as long as I live, I'm cross to a saleswoman, no matter how cross she may be to me, then may God send a sudden angel down to grasp me by the hair and bear me far and drop me into the kitchen ware on eight a week and my throbbing feet! JANE. _Saturday Night._ MY DEARS, I'm turned off. After all the trying and enduring and the dead-tiredness, I'm turned off. The kind little floorwalker hated to do it. "Say, listen, sister," he said, "it's like this. We gotter let somebuddy go. Holidays comin', people ain't goin' to buy kitchen ware. Sure they ain't. Plug up th' leakin' kettle an' buy Mummer th' rhinestone combs! Well, you're the last to come, see? You gotter be the first to go." I bought Mrs. Mussel a shrinking bunch of violets to soften the blow, but she wondered if I couldn't get my money back (_her_ money she figures, poor thing!) if I hurried right downtown with them and explained that I'd changed my mind. Heavens, but we had a horrible supper. Very down indeed, JANE. _Monday Night._ DEAR PEOPLE, I'm doing my best to uplift Mrs. Mussel, but she's the undisputed Queen of all the Glooms and my sprightly efforts fall on stony ground. For her peace of mind I divulged the fact that I have nearly thirty dollars left which makes me really a capitalist, but in her eyes I am simply an Unemployed.