At home there was no privacy. The house was full of hulking men; pipe-smoke; the smell of food eternally stewing on the stove; shrill or guttural voices; rough jests. Book-reading, bathing, reticence on Jennie's part were all shouted down as attempts at being "toney." When she came home from the factory at night, tired, nerve-worn, jaded, the house was as cluttered and dirty as it had been when she left it in the morning. The mother went with the boarders (this Jennie told as evenly and dispassionately as the rest). She had run away from home after the last hideous family fracas. She had taken the money in a spirit of hatred and revenge. She'd do it again. If they had let her go to school, as she had wanted to--she used to talk English all right, like the teacher--but you heard the other kind of talk around the house and at the factory and pretty soon you couldn't talk the right way. They made fun of you if you did. A business college course. That was what she wanted. She could spell. At school she could spell better than anyone in the room. Only they had taken her out in the sixth grade. What to do with Jennie? The two older women looked at each other over Jennie's head. The course in stenography could be managed simply enough. Judge Barton met such problems hourly. But what to do with Jennie in the meantime? She shrank from consigning to a detention home or a Girls' Refuge this fundamentally sound and decent young creature. Suddenly, "I'll take her," said Lottie. "How do you mean?" "I'll take her home with me. We've got rooms and rooms in that barracks of ours. The whole third floor. She can stay for awhile. Anyway, she can't go back to that house." The girl sat looking from one to the other, uncomprehending. Her hands were clutching each other tightly. Emma Barton turned to her. "What do you say, Jennie? Would you like to go home with Miss Payson here? Just for awhile, until we think of something else? I think we can manage the business college course." The girl seemed hardly to comprehend. Lottie leaned toward her. "Would you like to come to my house, Jeannette?" And at that the first stab of misgiving darted through Lottie. "My house?" She thought of her mother. "Yes," answered Jennie with the ready acquiescence of her class. "Yes."