In these conditions Katie found many imperative duties, but none quite so immediately imperative as the repression of Mr. Porter. She had not made her first sale at the main women's hosiery counter on the first floor, to which she had been assigned on her arrival--pretty girls always being favored with first-floor positions--when that tall, gray-whiskered gentleman, his duties in his underground office not at this hour holding him, majestically approached her. "Good-morning, Miss Flanagan," he said, with a beneficent smile, as he placed his white hand upon her quailing shoulder. Katie became very busy with the stock that was new to her. "Good-morning, Mr. Porter," she answered.--"Say, Miss Isaacs, how much do these lisle ones sell at?" "I thought," said Mr. Porter, fixing her with his apparently emotionless gaze, "that I would just come over and see if you were well taken care of." "None better, Mr. Porter." Katie smiled sweetly as she said it, and still more sweetly as she significantly added: "Them's always taken good care of as are used to takin' good care of themselves." Mr. Porter blinked, but his expression, or lack of expression, did not alter. "No doubt," he responded, as he reluctantly made ready to go away; "but I shall be glad to be of help at any time I can." "Thank you, Mr. Porter." "And I shall drop around now and then to see that all goes well." "Thank you, Mr. Porter." "Because I was always interested in Miss Costigan--very much interested, and she was very pleasant to me--and I am naturally very much interested in her successor, too." "Thank you, Mr. Porter." "And, by the way, Miss Flanagan," he added as his Parthian shaft, "I trust you won't worry over that little loan, you know; there's no hurry in the world about repayment." Katie met his vacant glance with the innocent eyes of a grateful child. "That's kind you are, Mr. Porter," she answered, "and since you say it, I shan't worry, sir." But for all that, she did not by any means dismiss the man from her thoughts. Her true schooling had been received from the textbook of life, and she had readily observed in Porter's demeanor the tokens that announced the beginning of a chase. To one class of hunters there is no closed season, and Katie knew that this class considered her and her kind fair game. There had been occasions when she had debated seriously, sometimes with herself and sometimes with a companion, whether it was worth while to continue the flight, whether from three to six years of captivity, of toil that must end in death, but that was at least assured of food, were not to be preferred to the continuance of a precarious dodging through the industrial forest with the possibility of starvation lurking behind every bush. But this question she had always, thus far, answered in the negative, at first because of her inherent disinclination to confess defeat in any struggle that engaged her, and at last because of Hermann Hoffmann.