"Ike Lavinski says she ought to be in a hospital some place," she urged Mrs. Snawdor. "He says she never is going to be any better. He says it's epilepsy." "Wel he ain't tellin' me anything' I don't know," said Mrs. Snawdor, "but I ain't goin' to put her away, not if she th'ows a fit a minute!" It was not maternal solicitude alone that prompted this declaration. The State allowed seventy-live dollars a year to parents of epileptic children, and Mrs. Snawdor had found Fidy a valuable asset. Just what her being kept at home cost the other children was never reckoned. "Well, I'll take care of her on one condition," stipulated Nance. "You got to keep Lobelia at school. It ain't fair for her to have to stay home to nurse Fidy." "Well, if she goes to school, she's got to work at night. You was doin' your two hours at Lavinski's long before you was her age." "I don't care if I was. Lobelia ain't strong like me. I tell you she ain't goin' to do home finishing, not while I'm here." "Well, somebody's got to do it," said Mrs. Snawdor. "You can settle it between you." Nance held out until the middle of January; then in desperation she went back to the Lavinskis. The rooms looked just as she had left them, and the whirring machines seemed never to have stopped. The acrid smell of hot cloth still mingled with the odor of pickled herrings, and Mr. Lavinski still came and went with his huge bundles of clothes. Nance no longer sewed on buttons. She was promoted to a place under the swinging lamp where she was expected to make an old decrepit sewing-machine forget its ailments and run the same race it had run in the days of its youth. As she took her seat on the first night, she looked up curiously. A new sound coming regularly from the inner room made her pause. "Is that a type-writer?" she asked incredulously. Mr. Lavinski, pushing his derby from his shining brow, smiled proudly. "Dat's vat it is," he said. "My Ike, he's got a scholarship offen de high school. He's vorking his vay through de medical college now. He'll be a big doctor some day. He vill cure my Leah." Nance's ambition took fire at the thought of that type-writer. It appealed to her far more than the sewing-machine. "Say, Ike," she said at her first opportunity, "I wish you'd teach me how to work it." "What'll you give me?" asked Ike, gravely. He had grown into a tall, thin youth, with the spectacled eyes and stooped shoulders of a student. "Want me to wash the dishes for your mother?" Nance suggested eagerly. "I could do it nights before I begin sewing." "Very well," Ike agreed loftily. "We'll begin next Sunday morning at nine o'clock. Mind you are on time!"