But it had been a
nightmare week which seemed longer than all the past weeks of her life
added together and if she had earned a hundred dollars instead of six
she would not have felt too highly paid.
She moved wearily away from the office window, obeying the directions
to "read other side," and as she walked down the long corridor (her
sore feet causing her to limp slightly) the words "_if sick or
disabled, notify employment bureau at once_" sang through her head,
keeping time with her uneven steps.
She _was_ "reading the other side," the other side of life which
appeared to her as separate from the side she had known as the bright
was separate from the dark side of the moon; the side about which
people seldom troubled and never saw. A few weeks ago, before that
"wild spirit" of hers lured her half across the world to find
independence, she would have thought, feeling as she felt to-night,
that she was both sick and disabled. But now she knew that hundreds of
other girls under this very roof felt just as she felt, and that they
took it for granted as a normal condition of life. They hardly pitied
themselves, and she must be as stoical.
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