"I don't know," Lottie replied, weakly. She thought of the girl of the old Armour Institute days--the girl who used to go bicycling on Saturdays with the boy in the jersey sweater. They had talked about school, and books, and games, and dreams, and even hopes--very diffidently and shyly--but never once about reality or life. If they had perhaps things would have been different for Lottie Payson, she thought now. "Let's go home, Chas." On the drive home Charley talked of her new work. She was full of shop stories. Nightly she brought home some fresh account of the happenings in her department; a tale of a buyer, or customer, or clerk, or department head. Henry Kemp called these her stock of stock-girl stories. Following her first week at Shield's she had said grimly: "Remember that girl O. Henry used to write about, the one who kept thinking about her feet all the time? That's me. I'm that little shop-girl, I am." Her father encouraged her dinner-table conversation and roared at her rather caustic comment: "Our buyer came back from New York to-day. Her name's Healy. She has her hair marcelled regularly and wears the loveliest black crêpe de chine frocks with collars and cuffs that are simply priceless, and I wish you could hear her pronounce 'voile.' Like this--'vwawl.' It isn't a mouthful; it's a meal. Don't glare, mother. I know I'm vulgar. When a North Shore customer comes in you say, 'Do let me show you a little import that came in yesterday. It's too sweet.' All high-priced blouses are 'little imports.' They're as precious as jewels since the war, of course. Healy used to be a stock-girl. They say her hair is gray but she dyes it the most fetching raspberry shade. Her salary is twelve thousand a year and she could get eighteen at any one of the other big stores. She stays at Shield's because she thinks it has distinction. 'Class,' she calls it, unless she's talking to a customer or someone else she's trying to impress. Then she says 'atmosphere.' She supports her mother and a good for-nothing brother. I like her. Her nails glitter something grand. She calls me girlie. I wonder if her pearls are real." Lottie listened now, fascinated, amused, and yet wondering, as Charley gave an account of the meeting of the Ever Upward Club. Charley was driving with one hand on the steering wheel. She was slumped low down on her spine. Lottie thought how relaxed she looked and almost babyish, and yet how vital and how knowing. The Ever Upward Club, she explained, was made up of the women workers in Shield's. There had been a meeting of the club this morning, before the store opened at nine. It was the club's twenty-fifth anniversary. Charley, on the subject, was vitriol.