"I don't." The girl at the machine laughed. "Those Simcoe children didn't have a dress to change in, and I'm practising on some skirts and waists for them. Every day I'm finding out something else I don't know how to do. I seem to have been taught a good many things there is no special need of knowing, and very few I can make use of down here." "You didn't expect to come down here when you were learning things, did you?" Carmencita's eyes were gravely watching the efforts being made to thread the machine's needle. "I guess when you were a little girl you didn't know there were things like you see down here. What made you come here, Miss Frances? You didn't have to. What made you come?" Into the fine fair face color crept slowly, and for a moment a sudden frown ridged the high forehead from which the dark hair, parted and brushed back, waved into a loose knot at the back of her head; then she laughed, and her dark eyes looked into Carmencita's blue ones. "Why did I come?" The gingham dress on which she had been sewing was folded carefully. "I came to find out some of the things I did not know about. I wasn't of any particular use to anybody else. No one needed me. I had a life on my hands that I didn't know what to do with, and I thought perhaps--" "You could use it down here? You could use a dozen down here, but you weren't meant not to get married. Aren't you ever going to get married, Miss Frances?" "I hardly think I will." Frances Barbour got up and pushed the machine against the wall. "The trouble about getting married is marrying the right man. One so often doesn't. I wouldn't like to make a mistake." Again she smiled. "Don't see how you could make a mistake. Isn't there some way you can tell?" "My dear Carmencita!" Stooping, the child's face was lifted and kissed. "I'm not a bit interested in men or marriage. They belong to--to a long, long time ago. I'm interested now in little girls like you, and in boys, and babies, and gingham dresses, and Christmas trees, and night classes, and the Dramatic School for the children who work, and--" "I'm interested in them, too, but I'm going to get married when I'm big enough. I know you work awful hard down here, but it wasn't what you were born for. I'm always feeling, right inside me, right here"--Carmencita's hand was laid on her breast--"that you aren't going to stay here long, and it makes an awful sink sometimes. You'll go away and forget us, and get married, and go to balls and parties and wear satin slippers with buckles on them, and dance, and I'd do it, too, if I were you. Only--only I wish sometimes you hadn't come. It will be so much harder when you go away."