"I've been over to the Chronicle office," Mae Smith chattered. "Left some fashion notes for the Sunday--good stuff--but I don't know whether he'll use 'em; that kid that's holdin' down McGennigle's job don't buy much space. He's got it in for me anyhow. I beat him on a convention story when he was a cub. I was just goin' down to your office."
"Yes? I'm on the way to the doctor's."
"You don't look well, that's a fact. Sick?"
Helen smiled, faintly. "I do feel miserable. Like every one else I got a drenching at the Thanksgiving Game."
"That's too bad," Mae Smith murmured absently. What was a cold compared to the fact that she needed two dollars and a half? "Say, I wonder if I could get a little loan for a few days? You know I bought this suit on the installment plan and I'm two weeks behind on it. The collector was around yesterday and said he'd have to take it back. I can't go around gettin' fashion notes in my kimono, and the milkman wouldn't leave any milk until I paid for the last ticket. I'm up against it and I thought maybe--"
"How much do you want?"
"About two dollars and a half." The tense look faded instantly from Miss Smith's face.
Helen did not mention, as she laid that amount in her eager hand, that it was part of the money she had saved to buy a pair of long gloves.
"Thank you"--gaily--"ever so much obliged! I've got a corking idea in my head for a Sunday special and just as soon as I write it and get paid--"
"No hurry," Helen answered with a quizzical smile, and she watched Mae Smith clamber joyously on a street car to ride two blocks and spend the fare that Helen had walked eight blocks to save.
The girl's spirits were low and her face showed depression when she mounted the broad stone steps of the physician's city office and residence, but when she came down the look had changed to a kind of frozen fright.
She had not felt like herself for weeks, but she did not dream that it was anything which time and a little medicine would not cure. Now, he had told her that she must leave the city--stop her work at once.
He advised the South or West--particularly the West--some place where it was high and dry. How lovely--and so simple! Just stop work and start! Why didn't he say St. Petersburg or the Arctic circle. With no income save what she earned from week to week they were equally impossible.