Then, one rainy Saturday afternoon there was a knock at her door, and, opening it, she found Miss Freighley upon the outside. "It is our mending afternoon," she said, "and we want you to come and sit with us. If you have any sewing to do, just bring it." Mariana picked up her work-basket, and, finding that her thimble was missing, began rummaging in a bureau-drawer. "I never mend anything until I go to put it on," she said. "It saves so much trouble." Then she found her thimble and followed Miss Freighley into the hall. Miss Freighley laughed in a pretty, inconsequential way. She had a soft, monotonous voice, and spoke with a marked elimination of vowel sounds. "We take the last Saturday of the month," she said. "Only Juliet and I do Gerty's things, because she can't sew, and she cleans our palettes and brushes in return." She swung open the door of the apartment, and they entered a room which served as studio and general lounging-room in one. A tall girl, sitting upon the hearth-rug beside a heap of freshly laundered garments, stood up and held out a limp, thin hand. "I told Carrie she would find you," she said, speaking with a slight drawl and an affected listlessness. She was angular, with a consumptive chest and narrow shoulders. She wore her hair--which was vivid, like flame, with golden ripples in the undulations--coiled confusedly upon the crown of her head. Her name was Juliet Hill. A mistaken but well-known colorist had once traced in her a likeness to Rossetti's "Beata Beatrix." The tracing had resulted in the spoiling of a woman without the making of an artist. Mariana threw herself upon a divan near the hearth-rug and looked down upon the pile of clothes. "What a lot of them!" she observed, sympathetically. Miss Hill drew a stocking from the heap and ran her darning-egg into the heel to locate a hole. "It is, rather," she responded, "but we never mend until everything we have is in rags. I couldn't find a single pair of stockings this morning, so I knew it was time." "If you had looked into Gerty's bureau-drawer you might have found them," said Miss Freighley, seating herself upon the end of the divan. "Gerty never marks her things, and somehow she gets all of ours. Regularly once a month I institute a search through her belongings, and discover more of my clothes than I knew I possessed. Here, give me that night-gown, Juliet. The laundress tore every bit of lace off the sleeve. What a shame!"