Then I begun noticing the women. They looked like the kind I'd seen in the _Weekly_, Saturdays, when there was pictures. They were all light-colored, with dresses that you couldn't tell how they were made, and hair that you couldn't remember how it was done up, and soft voices that went up and down, different from any I'd ever heard. I could hear what some of them near me were saying, but there was none of it that I could understand, nor what it was about, nor what the names meant. And all of a sudden I see through it: These folks must all have done the things he had done--Asia, Europe, volcanoes--and they could talk about it his way. These were the kind of people he was used to. Right near me was a woman in a dress that looked like I've seen the clouds look like, all showing through pink, with a hat like I'd never seen except once in a window when I was waiting for Mother and her teeth. I remember just what the woman said--I stood saying it over, like when I was learning a piece for elocution class, home. She says: "I beg your pardon? But I fancy Mr. Ember would call that effect far from artificial...." They walked by me. I stood there, saying over and over what she had just said about Mr. Ember. I didn't know what it meant, but it made me remember something. It made me remember the way I'd talked to him that morning, and the song I'd sung him, running backward on the road and trying to flirt with him; and that about his not giving me his right name. "Pardon me," somebody near me said, "I wonder if I may serve you in any way?" I didn't half see the man who spoke to me. I just shook my head, and slipped out the door and out of the little yard. CHAPTER V It was that night that I begun this book. I'd brought in a loaf of bread and a little warming pan and a can of baked beans. We het the beans over the gas-jet and made a good supper--the water in the wash pitcher was all right to drink. Then Mis' Bingy went to bed with the baby, and I got out the paper I'd fixed, and I started. It seemed as though I must. I had the feeling that I wanted to get out from the place I was in. Home, when I felt like that, I used to sweep the parlor or shampoo my hair, or try to get Father to leave me earn some money, helping him. Once I took my egg money and started lessons on our organ. But such things don't get you anywheres. And it seemed as though the book would help.