The group of boys melted around the corner, in the direction of the shortest way to the newspaper offices, and the funny little daily event was over for the time being. The red-haired girl had formed the acquaintance of this young mongrel band, and it had been her kindly whim to make for them a daily small joy to anticipate. She varied her gifts, but she never failed them; that they adored her and exalted her into an incarnate proof that human trustworthiness and kindness was truth, not fiction, she was keen enough to see was the best result of her action. No one but herself and the boys knew about “this freak philanthropy,” as she called it to herself; it took but a few minutes of her time and not a great expenditure of money. “It was worth it,” so she told herself, “to let her red hair light up the poor little snipes’ noon hour.” The girl swung into a tall building at a tremendous pace, her hands out of her pockets now, her arms swinging to speed her action, not at all breathless, but softly whistling: “Silver Threads among the Gold,” a little twist around the corners of her lips as she considered how distant that state of things was from her own radiant locks. She burst out of the elevator and into the great room of the telephone exchange almost with one movement, covering the intervening space between one and the other door on a sort of slide. “Well, Cis Adair! If I didn’t begin to wonder if you’d get here!” cried a small, extremely-ornamented young person waspishly, as the boyish red-haired girl appeared, throwing off her hat and jacket and hanging them up rapidly, smiling her gay smile at the small person whom she succeeded. “Sure--ly, Amelia! Don’t I always get there, whether it’s to work or to play? I’m only five minutes late, anyway,” cried the newcomer, harnessing her ears. “Five minutes is five minutes when you’ve got to get home, eat and dress. I’ve got a date, I’d have you know, Miss Cicely!” retorted Amelia. “Lucky you! Fruit market’s always closed for me; can’t even get a date, not ever!” sighed Cicely with a pensive droop of the head and an inimitable little wink at the girl on her farther side. “Sorry, Amelia! I’ll come five minutes early to-morrow, so get another date ready. Might I hint that you’d get there sooner if you started, now I am here, than if you lingered to reproach me?” The other girls laughed, and Amelia Day flounced away with a toss of her head. It was recognized in the office that there “was no sort of use in trying to get ahead of Cis Adair.” Most of the girls liked her, a few of them were her devoted admirers, so it was only Amelia who ever really longed to damage her happy-go-lucky confidence in herself and in all her world. “Funny little old Amelia!” Cis said after Amelia had gone. “Seems to disagree with herself so like fury, and not to be able to cut herself out of her diet.”