Francis King's own mental processes were too disjointed and ill-formulated to enable her to express the half-formed thoughts that came to her. Her heart ached for her little friend to whom to-day was always welcome, and to whom to-morrow never appeared a possibility other than that it would be sunshiny, and warm, and comfortable. Francis saw a certain to-morrow which should come to Ettie, far more clearly than did the child herself, and seeing, sighed. Her impulse was to argue the case hotly with Ettie, as she had done with her father; but she looked at her face again, and then, as a sort of safety-valve for her own emotion, succinctly said: "Ettie Berton, you are the biggest fool I ever saw." Ettie clapped her hands. "Right you are, says Moses!" she exclaimed, laughing gleefully, "and you like me for it. Folks with sense like fools. Sense makes people so awful uncomfortable. Say, where'd you get that bird on your hat? Out 'o stock? Did that old mean thing make you pay full price? Goodness! how I do wish I could go back t' store!" "Ettie, how'd you like for me to come here an live with you? Do you 'spose Miss Gertrude would care?" "Hurrah for Cleveland!" exclaimed Ettie, springing to her feet and throwing her arms about Francis. "Hurrah for Grant! Gracious, but I'm glad! I'm just so lonesome I had to make my teeth ache for company," she rattled on. "Miss Gertrude 'll be glad, too. She said she wisht I had somebody 't take care of me. But, gracious! I don't need that. They ain't nothing to do but just set still n' wait. It's the waitin' now that makes me so lonesome. I want t' hurry 'n get back t' the store, 'n--" She noticed Francis's look of surprise, not unmixed with frank scorn; but she did not rightly interpret it. "My place ain't gone is it, Fan?" she asked, in real alarm. "He said he'd keep it for me." "Ettie Berton, you are the biggest fool I ever saw," said Francis, again, this time with a touch of hopelessness and pathos in her voice, and at that moment there was a rap at the door. It was one of the cash girls from the store. She handed Francis a note, and while Ettie and the visitor talked gaily of the store, Francis read and covered her pale face with her trembling hands. She was discharged "owing to certain necessary changes to be made in the trimming department." She went and stood by the window with her back to the two girls. She understood the matter perfectly, and she did not dare trust herself to speak. It could not be helped, she thought, and why let Ettie know that she had brought this disaster upon her friend, also. Francis was trying to think. She was raging within herself. Then it came to her that she had boldly asserted that she would help protect and support Ettie. Now she was penniless, helpless, and homeless herself. There were but two faces that stood out before her as the faces of those to whom she could go for help and counsel, and she was afraid to go to even these. She was ashamed, humiliated, uncertain.