The Beggar Man

Faith was vaguely disappointed. She had been so sure that Peg would see the romance of her adventure. She worked badly that day; her fingers seemed all thumbs.

Twice the forewoman spoke to her sharply, and once Peg said with a faint smile: "You're thinking about that car, aren't you, Faith?"

The girl flushed sensitively, with quick denial.

"Of course not." But she knew that she was.

She looked at herself anxiously in a tiny glass before she started home. For the first time she realized how pale and thin she was, and how poor her clothes. Her heart swelled with a sense of the injustice of life as she trudged along the hot streets.

To-day there was no Beggar Man, no wonderful car gliding up to the kerb to pick her up and carry her the weary way home; such a thing could not happen a second time.

"But it was only a story, Faith...." That was what her mother had said, so perhaps everything wonderful in life was just a story, too--nev