“Well, I didn’t know how you’d feel about it. I think it’s fine of you. Some folks are so kind of proud nowadays. But I somehow thought you were sensible.” “Well, what should I be proud about?” laughed Joyce. “I haven’t any reputation here to lose anyway, and if people want to think less of me because I know how to cook they can.” “Well, I say you’re a real fine girl. So that’s settled, and I’m kind of glad, for her husband’s on the school board, and if she wants to she can do a lot for you. You run right in the house and call her up. Her number is 95 and her name is Powers. I told her you’d call.” Joyce ran in to the telephone and came out smiling in a moment: “Thank you ever so much, Mrs. Bryant. This will help me out a lot. I’ve just been thinking of a good many things I want to get and I wasn’t sure I ought to spare the money. Now I can get them right away. I’m to go to her at twelve o’clock and stay till after the dishes are washed. Which way did you say she lives?” After most explicit directions had been given Joyce went back to her house and flew at the bundle of chintz with swift fingers. There was about three hours of daylight left--the evenings were long this time of year--and she must use every minute of them for she must have a thin dress to work in and she did not want to burn a light and show that she was staying nights in the place until she had things looking a little more comfortable, both because she did not want any one to offer her charity, and because she did not care to have them all know how poverty-stricken she really was. She folded her material crosswise in the middle and spread it upon the driest place on her cleanly scrubbed floor. Then she laid her blue serge smoothly down upon it with the shoulders to the fold and the kimona sleeves stretched toward the selvages. The material reached below the serge far enough for a good hem, and guided by her serge dress she took her sharp, new scissors and carefully cut out a straight little simple slip of a dress. She had cut many a dress before, on Aunt Mary’s big diningroom table with a box of shining pins and a tried and true pattern to guide her. But she knew the lines of a simple dress well enough and she could not see how she could go far astray in her cutting. It had to be long enough and wide enough for it was as big as her blue serge. So she clipped away, and soon had a dress cut out, making the neck line only a curved slit until she should try it on.