"And what are you doing at the Men's Furnishing counter, Corinne?" said Carlisle, pleasantly but quite at random. "Buying a present for Mr. V.V., I suppose?" "Yes, ma'am." Having taken Carlisle completely aback, she hesitated and then added timidly: "Only a fulldress-shirt protector--for his birthday, y' know?... All his sick give him little presents now'n then, ma'am, find out his sizes and all. You know how he is, spending all his money on them, and never thinking about himself, and giving away the clo'es off his back." "Yes, I know.... Find out his sizes?" "Yes, ma'am. Like, say, 'Why, Mr.--why, Dr. Vivian, what small feet you got, sir, for a gempman!' And he'll say, like, 'I don't call six and a half C so small!' Yes, ma'am--just as innocent." A block and a half away, Hugo Canning's car whirled to a standstill, and Hugo sat gazing at the select door of Morland's. In Baird & Himmel's vast commonwealth, Kern Garland sat beside Miss Carlisle Heth at Gentlemen's Furnishings, and could not look at the lady's lovely clothes since her eyes could not bear to leave the yet lovelier face. Kern had not confided the secret of the protector without a turning of her heart, but now at least the thrill in her rose above that.... She and Mr. V.V.'s beautiful lady, side by side.... It was nearly as good as the velvet settee in the Dream--only for the founting, and the boy with the pink lamp on his head, and Mr. V.V.... An extremely full-busted Saleslady, with snapping black eyes, deposited a lean bundle and a ten-cent piece before the work-girl, oddly murmured something that sounded like 'Look who's ear,' and then said proudly to Carlisle: "What did you wish 'm?" "Nothing just now, thank you." The Saleslady gave her a glance of intense disapproval, pushed down her generous waist-line, arrogantly patted a coal-black transformation, and wheeled with open indignation. "That's nice," said Carlisle, to the factory-girl. "Then the presents come as a surprise to him." "Surprise--no, ma'am. He don't never know. Take the tags off 'n 'em, and slip 'em in his drawer, and he'll put 'em on and never notice nor suspicion, shirts and such. It's like he thought raiment was brought him by the crows,--like in the Bible, ma'am, y' know?" There was a brief silence. Carlisle's sheltered life had not too often touched the simple annals of the poor. She seemed to get a picture.... The little work-girl's face was not coarse, strangely enough, or even common-looking; it was pleasing in an odd, elfin way. Her white dress and black jacket were in good taste for her station, without vulgarity. Such details Carlisle's feminine eye soon gathered in. The touch she missed was that that cheap dress was an exact copy of one she herself had worn one Sunday afternoon in May, as near as Kern Garland could remember it. "How long were you at the Works?" said the lady suddenly. "At the Works? More'n three years, ma'am."