"And she?" The Lady Head looked toward the Italian girl whose stiletto she was holding gingerly between her fingers. "Her?"--the narrator pointed a laconic forefinger. "She's Tony's girl." When the weeping Caroline had been sent home in her father's carriage, and when the ambulance had creaked out through the gateway, the Lady Head turned to her little assistant. "If there are any fatal results from this--this criminal bit of negligence," she stated coldly, "I shall hold you personally responsible. You should have informed me of this long ago. Remember, you have been here fifteen years!" --Ida F. Treat. =The Lot of the Poor= Two women were walking with rapid but tired steps down one of the most disreputable streets in the city. "My," said the tallest one, turning up the collar of her threadbare coat, "don't this wind make you feel like you was dressed in your bones?" The other woman, who was, if possible, more shabby-looking, pushed her red gloveless hands deeper into her pockets. "Yes, and I forgot to wear my sables to-day, ain't it too bad?" she returned in a dreary tone, whose irony was somewhat modified by the chattering of her teeth. "Mary Jane, you just quit talkin' like that," burst out the other, evidently the older of the two. "You didn't never use to be that way before you commenc't workin' out by the day. Why you was the jolliest girl in the factory and allays made the best of everything; but now nothin' is ever good enough for you. Of course none of us would mind having things a little better, but as far as I can see, things have allays been this way with us and allays will be, wishin' or no wishin'." "I ain't sayin' they won't," Mary Jane said shortly. "Well, I know it, you ain't sayin' nothin'; that's just the trouble. I wish you'd tell me what's the matter with you, Mary Jane, 'Tain't natural for a girl like you to be so dull and sulky." "'Tain't natural, did you say?" flared up the other. "'Tain't natural to wonder why the lady you work for wears silks and satins, while your own clothes are almost too ragged to cover you? Ain't it natural," she asked with blazing eyes, "to want to tear a few silks off of her back to cover your own? You ain't never seen nice things near you, Ann. You've allays worked in the factory; so what do you know about such things? I tell you, if you worked in one of those palaces on Fifth Avenue all day and then come back to this at night, you'd see the difference." "Don't you s'pose I've seen swell things and people?" remonstrated the older woman. "I ain't no fool; but I've reasoned out that there's a few people meant to be rich, and the rest of us ain't, that's all!"