"Limbs, then," Susan would proceed graciously, "or, as Miss Sherman
says, legs---"

"Oh, Miss Brown! I DIDN'T! I never use that word!" the little woman
would protest.

"You don't! Why, you said last night that you were trying to get
into the chorus at the Tivoli! You said you had such handsome--"

"Oh, aren't you awful!" Miss Sherman would put her cold red fingers
over her ears, and the others, easily amused, would giggle at
intervals for the next half hour.

Susan Brown's desk was at the front end of the room, facing down the
double line. At her back was a round window, never opened, and never
washed, and so obscured by the great cement scrolls that decorated
the facade of the building that it gave only a dull blur of light,
ordinarily, and no air at all. Sometimes, on a bright summer's
morning, the invading sunlight did manage to work its way in through
the dust-coated ornamental masonry, and to fall, for a few moments,
in a bright slant, wheeling with motes, across the office floor. But
usually the girls depended for light upon the suspended green-hooded
electric lights, one over each desk.

Susan though that she had the most desirable seat in the room, and
the other girls carefully concealed from her the fact that they
thought so, too. Two years before, a newcomer, she had been given
this same desk, but it faced directly against the wall then, and was
in the shadow of a dirty, overcrowded letter press. Susan had turned
it about, straightened it, pushed the press down the room, against