that her gentle mother would be inexorable in her decision that the
shop must not even be entered again. The girl was rapidly acquiring
a certain shrewd hardihood. She was not given to sentiment, and
was too young to suffer deeply from regret for the past. Indeed
she turned buoyantly toward the future, while at the same time she
recognized that life had now become a keen battle among others in
like condition.

"I don't intend to starve," she said to herself, "nor to bite off
my own nose because the world is not just what mother and Millie
think it ought to be. Papa would be inclined to break that man's
head if I told him what he said and how he looked. But what would
come of it? Papa would go to jail and we into the street. Unless
papa can get up in the world again very fast, Millie and I shall find
that we have got to take care of ourselves and hold our tongues. I
hadn't been around with mamma one day before I learned that much.
Mamma and Millie were never made to be working-women. They are
over-refined and high-toned, but I can't afford too much of that
kind of thing on three dollars a week. I'm a 'shop lady'--that's
the kind of lady I'm to be--and I must come right down to what
secures success without any nonsense."

In justice it should be said that Belle's practical acceptance of
the situation looked forward to no compromise with evil; but she
had seen that she must come in contact with the world as it existed,
and that she must resolutely face the temptations incident to her
lot rather than vainly seek to escape from them. Alas! her young
eyes had only caught a faint glimpse of the influences that would
assail her untrained, half-developed moral nature. Body and soul
would be taxed to the utmost in the life upon which she was entering.