“No,” said Marcia, “I’m not a milliner. I never made a hat in my life. But I can make stylish dresses. I do know how to keep a room clean, how to display goods in an attractive manner.” “Do you know anything,” asked the woman, her hands gripping the inner edge of the showcase, “about keeping even—bills, and money, and things like that?” For the first time, in she could not remember when, Marcia laughed aloud. Laughter was an unaccustomed sound on her lips. When she heard the tones of it, she was so shocked that she stopped abruptly as if she had committed an indiscretion. “Yes,” she said, “I do know enough about business to run a place like this without the least difficulty. To tell the truth, I’ve had a lot of schooling on how business should be done to be successful. What have you been doing? Letting your customers take away your goods without paying for them, and now the bills are due, and you’ve no money to meet them?” The woman nodded. “Hm-m-m,” said Marcia. “Well, I could go out and collect all that I could pry out of people. I could clean up this place. Maybe I could convince your banker that he’d be safe in letting you have what you’d need to tide you over till we could get things started on a new and safe basis. Would you like to have me come in with you and try to help you into really prosperous business?” Suddenly the little woman across the counter, clasping a pair of needle-roughened, shaking hands against her defrauded chest, looked with the beseeching eyes of a starving creature at the face of the woman opposite her. “Oh, would you? Oh, would you, please?” she begged. Marcia was taken unaware. She did not know that there was a soft place remaining in her heart capable of the response she felt herself making to that artless appeal. “I certainly would,” she answered. “I’d be mighty glad for the chance. I don’t know a thing in the world about you. You don’t know a thing in the world about me. Shall we agree to take each other on trust, to ask no questions, but start from now together and see what we can make out of life?” “I’d be tickled to death!” said the little woman, recklessly toppling preconceptions and precautions of a lifetime. “Is there room for me here?” inquired Marcia. “Come and see what you think. And my name is Miss Nancy Bodkin,” said the milliner, leading the way to the back room. “Very well, Miss Nancy,” said Marcia. “My name is Miss Marcia Peters. Let’s explore your living arrangements.” Then she followed into the work room and found that there opened from it a bedroom sufficiently large for two people, and back of it was the combined dining room and kitchen in which Miss Nancy Bodkin had been existing for many years. Looking about her, the fingers of the capable Marcia tingled for order, cleanliness, fresh wall paper and paint, but she sensibly reasoned that these things could come later.