Her purchases were to be made in the three-quarters of an hour allowed for supper.  The time Catriona consumed in eating her five-cent meal was never long, so that, even allowing for prolonged purchasing, her absence of an hour was strange.

“D——­ your soul, where in hell have you been all this time, Catie?” the manager screamed at her, angrily, without glancing at her, when she came back at last.

Catriona looked more anxious and white than ever before.  Her face was stained with weeping.  “I lost my purse,” she said in a dazed, unsteady voice.  “It was gone when I opened my bag in the lunch-room.  I’ve looked for it everywhere.”

There was a sudden breathless change in the air of the department.  You could have heard a pin drop.

“Better go down to the basement and wash your face,” said the manager, awkwardly, with unbelievable gentleness.

“Well,” she continued suddenly, the minute Catriona was out of ear-shot, “I’m not so poor but I can help to make that up.”  She took a dollar bill from her pocket-book.  Every one contributed something, though several girls went without their supper for this purpose, and one girl walked home four miles after midnight.  Altogether they could give nearly ten dollars.

The manager sidled awkwardly toward Catriona, when she came back from washing her face.  “Here, kid,” she muttered sheepishly, pushing the money into the little girl’s hand.  Catriona, pale and dazed, looked up at her—­looked at the money, with a shy excitement and happiness dawning in her eyes.  Then she cried again with excitement and joy, and every one laughed, and sent her off again to wash her face.

That night everything was different in the department.  There had been a real miracle of transfiguration.  The whole air of intercourse was changed.  All the girls were gentle and dignified with each other.  Catriona’s eyes sparkled with pleasure.  Her careworn air was gone.  She was a child again.  She had never had any physical loveliness before; but on that night hundreds of passing shoppers looked with attention at the delight and beauty of her face.

On the next day everything went on as before.  The girls snapped at each other and jostled each other.  The beautiful manager swore.  One girl came, looking so ill that Miss Johnson was terrified.

“Can’t you stop, Kitty?  You look so sick.  For heaven’s sake, go home and rest.”

“I can’t afford to go home.”

Cross and snappish as the girls were, they managed to spare Kitty, and to stand in front of her to conceal her idleness from the floor-walker, and give her a few minutes’ occasional rest sitting down.  She went through the first hours of the morning as best she might, though clearly under pressure of sharp suffering.  But at about ten the floor-walker, for whom it must be said that he was responsible for the sales and general presentability of the department, saw her sitting down.  “Why aren’t you busy?” he called.  “Get up.”