"Sure. We all take a turn. Everything on the place is done by the girls, you know--washing, cooking, tailoring, gardening, and a lot besides." Her auditor relapsed into gloomy silence, a new horror added to her plight. At home, even the factotum they styled the hired girl had been exempt from washing. A strapping negress had come in Mondays for that. "I'm next door to you upstairs," pursued the new acquaintance, in her deprecating way. "My name is Amy Jeffries. What's yours?" She gave it after a moment's debate. The old beloved "Jack" was at the tip of her tongue, but she suddenly thought better of it. After all, "Jean" would answer for this place. She regretted that in lieu of Fanshaw she could not use Jones, or Smith, or--master stroke of irony--the abominated Tuttle. "Jean Fanshaw's a nice name," commented Amy sociably. Dreading further catechising, Jean struck in with a question of her own. "Why have those girls over there a better uniform and a table to themselves?" she demanded. "They're high grade." "What does that mean?" "Six months without a mark." Amy Jeffries cast a look of envy upon the group at the side table. "I'd like awfully to be high grade. It must seem like living again to sit down to a tablecloth. I should like the cuffs and collars, too. I just love dress. When I leave here I think I'll go into a dressmaking establishment, or a milliner's." Jean was reminded of something. "Tell me how I can get out of here in a year and a half," she requested. "Somebody said it could be done." Amy smiled wanly. "I wanted to know, too, when I was green. I could just see the guard holding the gate open as I sailed off the grounds! It was a beautiful dream." "Why couldn't you do it?" "Marks," said Amy sententiously. "Parole in eighteen months means a perfect record right from the beginning. I thought I'd try for it, but, mercy, I've never even made high grade! Once I came within six weeks of it, but I let a dress go down to the laundry with a pin in it." "They mark for a little thing like that?" "My stars, yes! For less than that--buttons off, wrong apron in the recreation-room, and so on. I got my first mark for wearing my hair 'pomp.' They won't stand for it here. They want to make us as hideous as they can." A lull threw the remarks of the girl with peculiar teeth into unsought prominence. "Jim was a swell-looker," she was saying, "and a good spender when he was flush, but I used to tell him--" "Delia!" The matron was on her feet leveling a rebuking finger at Jim's biographer. "You know better. Leave the room at once. All talking will cease." The culprit scuffed sulkily out, and no further word was uttered till the end of the meal, when at a signal all rose and the matron observed in pontifical tones, "Thou openest Thy hand!"