I give him a penny for a paper and didn't say anything. And then I felt better about the way I'd answered the policeman. It ain't so hard to act nice if you can only think in time. I walked all the way home. I went in every church I come to, because it was some place to go in. If I'd been shot out of a gun I couldn't have told 'em apart, and I wondered how they could tell themselves. And everywhere I went, there wasn't a soul to speak to. I tried to imagine what if Mis' Bingy and the baby wasn't back there in the room, and there was nobody to speak to when I got back. It felt funny, like once when I got too far from shore in the pond, home. I couldn't help thinking about Mr. Carney saying: "You must let me help you to keep from being too lonesome." And if he'd come along just then with his shiny car, I don't know but I'd have got in. It was the day after that that he come to the factory and asked for me. I didn't think he'd do that, but I guess he didn't care what he done. The foreman called me out, and when I got into his office there was Mr. Arthur, and he left me there with him. Mr. Arthur's hat was on the back of his head, and his light hair was flat down on his forehead, and his light-colored eyes and eyebrows made me want to get away from him, even if he was Mr. Ember's friend. "Child," he says to me, "why are you trying to avoid me? I've found a place for you where you can go and learn as much as you want. I've been waiting to tell you about it. Don't you trust me?" he says. I says, "I'd trust any friend of Mr. Ember's." "Well," he says, "anyhow, trust me. I'll call here for you to-night, and you let me tell you what I've got planned for you." "I'm going to meet with some of the girls to-night, Mr. Carney," I says. "Cut that out," he says. "Come with me." I laughed at that. "You act like your way was the way things are," I says. "I wish it were," he says, "I wish it were." "Listen, Mr. Carney," I says. "I've got a good job, and I like the girls. It's a dirty, disagreeable place to work, and we'd ought to have a good many things we haven't got," I says to him, "but I guess I'll stick it out for a while. I couldn't come to-night, anyway." "I'll wait for you to-morrow night, then," he says. "We'll have a little dinner somewhere, and a run in the car--" It was getting awful hard to remember to act nice, and I spilled over. "You got the ways of a hitching-post," I says; "but you ain't got the tie-strap." And I walked out and left him there. Two nights he run his car down to the door where he'd found I come out. Once I pretended not to see him, and run and caught a street-car. Once he jumped out and walked along beside me, and the girls fell back. I told him Mis' Bingy and I were going to have a banquet of wieners, fried on the gas-jet, and I couldn't come. He put a note in my hand, he never seemed to care what anybody thought, I noticed that about him. Mis' Bingy and I read the note, while the wieners were frying.