The magnet attracting a waif amid forces

part was not intended to take precedence, as Miss Madenda is not often on 
the stage, but the audience, with the characteristic perversity of such 
bodies, selected for itself. The little Quakeress was marked for a favourite 
the moment she appeared, and thereafter easily held attention and 
applause. The vagaries of fortune are indeed curious." 
The critic of the "Evening World," seeking as usual to establish a catch 
phrase which should "go" with the town, wound up by advising: "If you wish 
to be merry, see Carrie frown." 
The result was miraculous so far as Carrie's fortune was concerned. Even 
during the morning she received a congratulatory message from the 
manager. 
"You seem to have taken the town by storm," he wrote. "This is delightful. I 
am as glad for your sake as for my own." 
The author also sent word. 
That evening when she entered the theatre the manager had a most 
pleasant greeting for her. 
"Mr. Stevens," he said, referring to the author, "is preparing a little song, 
which he would like you to sing next week." 
"Oh, I can't sing," returned Carrie. 
"It isn't anything difficult. 'It's something that is very simple,' he says, 'and 
would suit you exactly.'" 
"Of course, I wouldn't mind trying," said Carrie, archly. 

---

"Would you mind coming to the box-office a few moments before you dress?" 
observed the manager, in addition. "There's a little matter I want to speak to 
you about." 
"Certainly," replied Carrie. 
In that latter place the manager produced a paper. 
"Now, of course," he said, "we want to be fair with you in the matter of 
salary. Your contract here only calls for thirty dollars a week for the next 
three months. How would it do to make it, say, one hundred and fifty a week 
and extend it for twelve months?" 
"Oh, very well," said Carrie, scarcely believing her ears. 
"Supposing, then, you just sign this." 
Carrie looked and beheld a new contract made out like the other one, with 
the exception of the new figures of salary and time. With a hand trembling 
from excitement she affixed her name. 
"One hundred and fifty a week!" she murmured, when she was again alone. 
She found, after all—as what millionaire has not?—that there was no 
realising, in consciousness, the meaning of large sums. It was only a 
shimmering, glittering phrase in which lay a world of possibilities. 
Down in a third-rate Bleecker Street hotel, the brooding Hurstwood read the 
dramatic item covering Carrie's success, without at first realising who was 
meant. Then suddenly it came to him and he read the whole thing over 
again. 
"That's her, all right, I guess," he said. 
Then he looked about upon a dingy, moth-eaten hotel lobby. 
"I guess she's struck it," he thought, a picture of the old shiny, plush-
covered world coming back, with its lights, its ornaments, its carriages, and 
flowers. Ah, she was in the walled city now! Its splendid gates had opened, 
admitting her from a cold, dreary outside. She seemed a creature afar off—
like every other celebrity he had known. 
"Well, let her have it," he said. "I won't bother her." 
It was the grim resolution of a bent, bedraggled, but unbroken pride.