If once she lost courage, she
might do the thing she had boasted to Peter Rolls, Jr., that she would
never do--cry.
She thought to find a tonic effect from the sight of money earned, and
in taking out her six dollars, she let fall a slip of white paper from
the pay envelope. It fluttered away, to alight on the floor, and Win's
heart beat as she picked it up.
Her discharge already? What could she have done to be sent off at the
end of a week--she who had tried so hard? And how strange that, tired
and disheartened as she was, she should actually _fear_ discharge! A
minute ago she had been asking herself, "How many weeks like this can
I live through?" and wishing that an end, almost any end, might come.
Yet here she was dreading to turn the slip over (she had retrieved it
blank side up) and read her doom.
"You are requested to call at the superintendent's private office
Monday, twelve forty-five," was neatly typewritten precisely in the
middle of the paper.
Win did not know whether to be relieved or alarmed.
"I'll ask Sadie what she thinks," was her quick decision. But Sadie
was not available this evening. An "old chum" had asked Miss Kirk out
to supper, and Miss Child having snubbed her faithful lion man for
reasons which had appeared good at the time, had no one to give her
the key to those dozen mystic words which might as well have been
written in cipher.
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