What the outcome might have been there is no imagining. What it was depended, at any rate in part, upon the fact that, on what proved to be her last day at the shop, she had come to work with a tired body and an aching head. She had sat up half the night in a long endeavor to persuade Carrie to leave the futile battle of the strikers and turn to other employment; and, when Carrie had rejected all proposals on the ground that, though the fight was lost, she knew no other sort of work, Katie had spent about all the remainder of the dark hours in an attempt to convince her roommate that the Irish girl's wages were enough to support both of them for some time to come. The result, so far as went her conduct at the store, was a temper ready to explode with the first spark, and that spark came when, in midafternoon, a nervous woman, who persisted in examining everything and buying nothing, interpreted Katie's lassitude as indifference and so reported it to the floor-walker. Katie was sent for to come to Mr. Porter's office. Mr. Porter looked up from the light at his desk, and then down again. He stroked a whisker. "Sit down, Miss Flanagan," he said. "Thanks," replied Katie, "I can take it just as well standin'." "Take what?" asked Mr. Porter. "Anythin' at all you have to say," said Katie. Mr. Porter continued to look at his desk and, by the name of "Miss Flanagan," addressed it severely. "Miss Flanagan," he said, "you have again been reported to me for discourtesy to a customer. The other case had not yet been adjusted. It might have been adjusted had not your cousin----" "Me aunt," prompted Katie. "Your aunt," frowned Mr. Porter to his desk, "had not your aunt been so disinclined to recover." "She was gettin' absent treatment from a bad doctor." "I know nothing of that----" "I think meself it was Malicious Animal Magnetism." "Please do not interrupt," said Mr. Porter, shaking his whiskers at the desk. "I say that the previous case was not adjusted, though it might have been, if your mother had not remained so ill." "Me aunt." "Your aunt, if you prefer it. Now comes this second case, and really, I am curious to know whether you can suggest anything that will make me regard it with the smallest degree of lenience." He looked again at the desk, as if the desk were the case he had referred to, but neither the desk nor Katie answered. "If you cannot," he at last concluded, "I see no course but one for me to pursue." Katie folded her arms across her breast and tossed her black head. "There's only one thing I can think of," said she, and waited. Mr. Porter breathed hard. "And what," he inquired, still without looking at her, "is that?" Katie took a soft step forward. She rested her hands upon the arm of his desk and leaned her face toward him. "Don't you know?" she asked in a low voice. Mr. Porter shot, from the corner of his eyes, one of his crooked glances at her. "I am not quite sure," he said.