"Just fill out this application-blank," he remarked as, breathless, Katie ended her little speech. They were in a dim, bare office under the street, the man at a roll-top desk lighted by a green-shaded incandescent lamp, the girl standing beside him. Mr. Porter indicated a writing-shelf along the opposite wall, where Katie found a pile of the blanks, and pen and ink. While she struggled with the task assigned her, Mr. Porter verified, by brief, sharp inquiries through a telephone, her statement of the approaching marriage of Miss Cora Costigan. Katie, meanwhile, was giving her age, her parentage, her birthplace, the name of the firm that had last employed her--she mentioned the candy-shop for that,--was cheerfully agreeing to join the "Employés' Mutual Benefit Association," and was putting a "Yes," which she intended promptly to forget, to the question that asked her to become a spy on her co-workers: "If you saw a fellow-employé doing anything detrimental to the interests of the firm, would you consider it your duty to report the same?" It was only at one of the last questions that she hesitated. "Please what does that mean?" she asked. Mr. Porter deigned to walk across the room and, close to her shoulder, examined the question. It was the simple one: "Do you live with your parents?" "That," said Mr. Porter, "is inserted because the firm wishes to have only nice girls here, and those with good home influences are considered--most trustworthy." Mr. Porter had the type of emotionless eyes that can say one sort of thing far better than the eyes of more temperamental people, and he now met Katie's steady gaze with a stare of considerable significance. Katie was rather sure that she understood. "So that," she said, "if I didn't live with my people, I couldn't have the job?" "So that," Mr. Porter corrected, "if a girl does get a position and lives with her family, she will be better cared for, and we will know that she is safe at home evenings." Katie hesitated no longer. She took the pen and, opposite the query, wrote a quick "Yes." To be sure she was, on that account, obliged to invent the kind of work done by her father and the amount of the family wage; but she so needed the position that her active wit at once supplied the answers. More or less truthfully, she put a word in reply to the remaining questions, signed her name, and wrote her address. Mr. Porter took the paper in his white fingers, read it slowly, folded it, indorsed it with several hieroglyphics, and placed it in a pigeon-hole. "I am filing this with our other applications," he said. "As soon as your name is reached, I will see that you are notified." Katie's jaw dropped. "But I thought," she began, "I thought I was to get the job now. I--isn't Cora leavin', thin, after all?" "Miss Costigan is leaving us, I understand," said Mr. Porter, stroking his whiskers; "but there are others--nearly a hundred--on the list ahead of you."