"Miss Wakely," she says, "I came to tell you what I have for you to do--and I was a good deal bothered--about your friend, Mis' Bingy. But it seems to me that she can earn considerably more than you can--with her lace. I paid six dollars a yard for lace like this not a fortnight ago." Then she turned to me. "You're going to a school right here in town," she said; "I have arranged everything. And now Mis' Bingy is going to find a larger room and make her lace." The wieners had burned black before any of us noticed. If ever you seen the sky open back, I guess you know. Mis' Carney asked me to spend Friday to Monday with her, and then she would take me over to the school. "Have I got to see your husband?" I says to her, direct. Her husband was in Europe, so that was how she could ask me. And Friday afternoon she come for me. "We can take your trunk in the car, if it's a small one," she says. "I ain't even got a satchel," I told her. "My other dress and things are in this here." Mis' Bingy was hanging over the bannister post, and the landlady with her. "Don't you go and forget me, Cossy," says Mis' Bingy, crying. The landlady used her face all the time like a strong light was in her eyes. "She'll forget you, all right," she says. "I got two daughters somewheres that I never hear a word out of. Best say good-by and leave it go at that." I always wanted everybody to tell the truth, but that woman sort of undressed it, and then told it. And it made a little hush, there in the hall. Mis' Carney's house was big and still. She took me to a bedroom at the back, looking out on a square garden. The furniture was white, with rose-buds on, and there were gray and pink rugs on the floor. The light colored rugs seemed so wonderful--just as if it didn't matter if they did get soiled, no more than towels. Nor not so much so. On the wall was a little picture of a boat with a bright-colored sail, on a real blue sky. The minute I see it, the whole thing kind of come over me. And I begun to cry. "Oh, Mis' Carney," I says, "we got a picture in the parlor, home. But it don't look like that." "Is that what you are crying for?" she asked. "No," I says, "I don't think so. I was thinking about the bed. Mother and I looked at one in a show-window, once." I remembered how Mother had stood and looked at it, all made up clean and pretty, even after I was tired and wanted to go on. Saturday morning we went shopping. I'd never been down-town before when I wasn't walking fast to get somewheres. This was the first time I had ever _looked_. Everywhere there were people, hurrying and thinking. "Look in this window, Cosma," Mis' Carney said as we went in a store. "How would you like that shade?" But the man that was fixing the things looked like a man that sold mackintoshes at the county fair, and I watched him. "You ought to have a longish coat," she says, "you're so tall."