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If the manager had forewarned her, she could have saved money enough to take her back to Iowa, where she might dare to be as friendly as she pleased with other respectable humans without fear of reproach. But he was not such a fool as to let go of one cashier till he had found another. It was while the manager was deciding which of three other young women to take that Mr. Drupe was stricken with apoplexy. He had finished eating his luncheon, which was served in the apartment, and had lighted a cigar, when he fell over. There were no children, and the Drupes kept no servant, but depended on the housekeeper to send them a maid when they required one, so that Mrs. Drupe found herself alone with her prostrate husband. The distracted wife did not know what to do. She took hold of the needle of the teleseme, but the words on the dial were confused; she quickly moved the needle round over the whole twenty-four points, but none of them suited the case. She stopped it at “porter,” moved it to “bootblack,” carried it around to “ice water,” and successively to “coupe,” “laundress,” and “messenger-boy,” and then gave up in despair, and jerked open the door that led to the hall. Miss Wakefield had just come up to the next apartment to inquire after a little girl ill from a cold, and was returning toward the elevator when Mrs. Drupe’s wild face was suddenly thrust forth upon her.

“Won’t you call a boy–somebody? My husband is dying,” were the words that greeted Miss Wakefield at the moment of the apparition of the despairing face.

Miss Wakefield rushed past Mrs. Drupe into the apartment, and turned the teleseme to the word “manager,” and then pressed the button three times in quick succession. She knew that a call for the manager would suggest fire, robbery, and sudden death, and that it would wake up the lethargic forces in the office. Then she turned to the form of the man lying prostrate on the floor, seized a pillow from the lounge, and motioned to Mrs. Drupe to raise his head while she laid it beneath.

“Who is your doctor?” she demanded.

“Dr. Morris; but it’s a mile away,” said the distracted woman. “Won’t you send a boy in a coupe”

“I’ll go myself, the boys are so slow,” said the cashier. “Shall I send you a neighboring doctor till Dr. Morris can get here?”

“Do! do!” pleaded the wife, now wildly wringing her hands.

Miss Wakefield caught the elevator as it landed the manager on the floor, and she briefly told him what was the matter. Then she descended, and had the clerk order a coupe by telephone, and then herself sent Dr. Floyd from across the street, while she ran to the stable, leaped into the coupe before the horse was fairly hitched up, and drove for Dr. Morris.

Dr. Morris found Mrs. Drupe already a widow when he arrived with the cashier. The latter promptly secured the addresses of Mr. Drupe’s brother and of his business partner, again entered the coupe, and soon had the poor woman in the hands of her friends.

The energetic girl went to her room that night exhilarated by her own prompt and kind-hearted action. But the evil spirit that loves to mar our happiness had probably arranged it that on that very evening she received a note from the manager notifying her that her services would not be required after one more week. On inquiry the next day she learned that some of the ladies had complained of her behavior, and she vainly tried to remember what she had done that was capable of misconstruction. She also vainly tried to imagine how she was to live, or by what means she was to contrive to get back to those who knew her too well to suspect her of any evil. She was so much perplexed by the desperate state of her own affairs that she even neglected to attend Mr. Drupe’s funeral, but she hoped that Mrs. Drupe would not take it unkindly.

It was with a heavy heart that the manager called Miss Wakefield into his office on the ground floor in order that he might pay her last week’s wages. He was relieved that she seemed to accept her dismissal with cheerfulness.

“What are you going to do?” he asked timidly.

“Why, didn’t you know?” she said. “I am to live with Mrs. Drupe as a companion, and to look out for her affairs and collect her rents. I used to think she didn’t like me. But it will be a good lesson to those ladies who found fault with me for nothing when they see how much Mrs. Drupe thinks of me.”

And she went her way to her new home in Mrs. Drupe’s apartment, at the end of the hall on the sixth floor, while the manager took from a pigeonhole Mrs. Drupe’s letter of complaint against the former cashier, and read it over carefully.

The thickness of the walls at the base of so lofty a building made it difficult for daylight to work its way through the tunnel-like windows, so that in this office a gas jet was necessary in the daytime. After a moment’s reflection the manager touched Mrs. Drupe’s letter of complaint to the flame, and it was presently reduced to everlasting illegibility.