"’Sibyl turned, tears gushin’ to her violet eyes, an’ coursin’ down her blush-rose cheeks. "I will not do it!" she cried, her lovely, musical voice tremblin’ with emotion. "I will not do it. Even a worm will turn."’ (Well, what’s the matter with that, so long as the worm’s got plenty o’ room to turn in, an’ turnin’ don’t make it dizzy?) Do you know what _I_ think? I think this little story is ’most too excitin’ for young girls like us, Cora. I think your father wants to read it, instead of _The New England Farmer_, an’ if he finds it won’t keep us awake nights or won’t harm our morals none, maybe he’ll give it back to us." Cora wept. "In the meantime, now this curtain’s stretched good an’ firm, let’s kinda go over it careful, to see does it need a stitch anywheres, just to take our minds off’n Sweet Sibyl, an’ that Millionaire Mate o’ hers with the gen’lmanly taste for sweat-shops. Say, Cora, come to think, p’raps he ran the sweat-shop. P’raps that’s how he come to be a millionaire. You never can tell. My! but ain’t this a lovely job! I never stretched a curtain smoother, or straighter, in my life. It’s as even as——" In her enthusiasm Martha’s arm swung out, in a vigorous gesture, which, somehow or other, Flicker’s alert intelligence interpreted as a command. With a bound he leaped from his sequestered corner, landed, with geometrical precision, in the center of the curtain, and went through, as if it had been a paper-covered hoop. For a second Cora was so dumbfounded that her sobs caught in her throat. Martha gazed at the destruction of her lovely job in silence. Then, Cora, scared by the suddenness of the performance, seeing in the accident only another avenue of bondage for herself, began to cry afresh, aloud.