It was a hot morning in the heart of summer. The girls, coming in to their work, after breakfasts of sour rolls, cheap, raw, bitter coffee and blue milk, with a greasy relish, perhaps, of sausage, bacon, fried potatoes, or whatever else was economical and untouchable,--with the world itself frying in the fervid blaze of a sun rampant for fifteen hours a day,--saw in the windows early peaches, cool salads, and fresh berries; yellow and red bananas in mellow, heavy clusters; morning bouquets lying daintily on wet mosses; pale, beryl-green, transparent hothouse grapes hanging their globes of sweet, refrigerant juices before toil-parched, unsatisfied, feverish lips. Let us hope that it did them good; it is all we can do now about it. Up in the work-room of a great dress-making establishment were heaps of delicate cambric, Victoria lawn, piques, muslins, piles of frillings, Hamburg edgings, insertions, bands. Machines were tripping and buzzing; cutters were clipping at the tables; the forewoman was moving about, directing here, hurrying there, reproving now and then for some careless tension, rough fastening, or clumsy seam. Out of it all were resulting lovely white suits; delicate, cloud-like, flounced robes of bewitching tints; graceful morning wrappers,--perfect toilets of all kinds for girls at watering-places and in elegant summer homes. Orders kept coming down from the mountains, up from the sea-beaches, in from the country seats, where gay, friendly circles were amusing away the time, and making themselves beautiful before each others' eyes. For it was fearfully hot again this year. Bel Bree did not care. It all amused her. She had not got worn down yet, and she did not live in a cheap, working-girls' boarding-house. She had had radishes that morning with her bread and butter, and a little of last year's fruit out of a tin can for supper the night before. That was the way Miss Bree managed about peaches. I believe that was the way she thought the petition in the Litany was answered,--"Preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth, that in due time we may enjoy them;" after the luckier people have had their fill, and begun on the new, and the cans are cheap. There are ways of managing things, even with very little money. If you pay for the _managing_, you have to do without the things. Bel and her aunt together, with their united earnings and their nice, cosy ways, were very far from being uncomfortable. Bel said she liked the pinch,--what there was of it. She liked "a little bit brought home in a paper and made much of." Bel had been just a fortnight in the city. She had gone right to work with her aunt at Fillmer & Bylles, she was bright and quick, knew how to run a "Wilcox & Gibbs," and had "some perception," the forewoman said, grimly; with a delicate implication that some others had not. Miss Tonker's praises always pared off on one side what they put on upon another.