"I will like that too," said Mercedes, with great unexpectedness. "You never let me talk to you alone, Mavis, and" she finished with a funny little undercurrent of wistfulness in her pretty voice, "I have no friends my own age--women friends, I mean." I had grown to be a little annoyed at my guest, but somehow, her simple statement opened up a vista before me which I had not dreamed existed. The child seemed, after all, hungry for companionship. It was out of the question that she should find it with her own indolent mother, who treated her as if she were half plaything and half infant; or with her father, whose attitude toward her was a curious commingling of affectionate despotism and anxiety: and the basis on which she met all her many men-satellites was not one guaranteed to produce comradeship. I put my arm through hers and took her into the kitchen with me. After my inconsiderable domestic task was completed, we went out on the verandah together, armed with sewing. Mercedes sewed beautifully, an art which her early convent education had taught her, and I took a real aesthetic pleasure in watching the smooth, dark head, bent over the fine linen in her lap. "What are you making?" I asked her, idly. She exhibited the very feminine garment: exquisitely embroidered and sewn with the most exact and even of tiny stitches. "I wish I could sew like that," I said, enviously, "but I should think you would ruin your eyes." She raised to mine the tremendous pools of liquid darkness in question. "But no," she said. "All Spanish girls are clever with the needle. The Sisters taught me when I was very young." I had been, with the Howells, to one of the convents near Havana, and I recalled now the sweet, patient faces of the nuns, and the marvelous work they showed us. Some of it lay in one of my trunks now, a present to Mrs. Goodrich from Bill and me. The thought of Mercedes behind the austere cloister walls was incongruous. "Were you long with the nuns?" I asked her. "Seven years," she answered, and then, amazingly, "I was very happy there--for a long time I wanted to take the veil, but Father was simply horrified at the idea." I was somewhat horrified myself. "I can't imagine it," I said flatly. "Why?" I didn't answer for a moment, and she went on, "But I know why--you think me very light and frivolous, do you not, Mavis?" "It would be difficult," I answered cautiously, "to imagine you as a nun!" "They are good women," she said, and was silent. Suddenly I realized that I knew very little more about this girl than I had known on the boat coming down to Havana, and yet, I had been with her almost constantly ever since. "Didn't you care for college?" I inquired, rather diffidently. Her great eyes lighted up.