There was a surprise in this departure, and Marian's deep eyes mirrored it. The questioner had become the questioned. "A great many kinds," she replied. "Why do you ask?" "Girls that work at all sorts of things?" "To be sure." "And you want to help 'em?" "We try to help them all." "Yes; I thought so. Can you help 'em all, Miss Lennox?" "When they let us, I think we can." "Then what do you do about them that hasn't been straight?" Marian softly caught her breath. "Oh," she said; "I----" She had learned, since their last meeting, a little about the girls concerning whom Mary was inquiring, and she had learned much regarding the Settlement's attitude toward them; but she had learned, also, that the work of the place most lay with the flowers that bloomed among the weeds, and so, "Well, you see," she lamely continued, "Well, we do the best we can." "What's that, please, Miss Lennox? I've got a particular reason for wanting to know." Marian understood. She spoke softly, and softly laced and interlaced her long white fingers, resting in her lap. "We do the best we can, Mary," she repeated, more confidently. "When we have investigated the case and are sure such a girl is sorry, or wasn't entirely to blame, and that she means to do what is right in the future, we make her our personal friend. We encourage her to come here and talk to us and get all the help possible. We have her around to all the entertainments----" "Can she learn?" asked Mary. "Learn?" Marian's voice was puzzled. "Can she go to the clubs and the classes they talked about when I was here first?" explained Mary. Marian shook a doubtful head. "You see that wouldn't do, right away, Mary," she said. "We have to think of the other girls, and we have to protect the girls that _are_ straight as well as help those that haven't been. These are their clubs, after all, and they wouldn't like it, if they knew. It wouldn't be just for us to deceive them, and they have the first claim on our protection." "Why?" It was the hardest question that Marian Lennox had ever had put to her. She tried to form an answer, but though she could think of many that seemed to her logical, she could think of none that seemed kind. Sympathy sprang to her eyes. She put out her hands. "Mary!" she said. But Mary had received her reply. "It don't matter, Miss Lennox," she said, and she said it so calmly and so coldly that Marian involuntarily drew back in her chair. "I just wondered, that was all." She stopped an instant. Her hostess tried to speak and could not, but presently the girl pursued: "I wasn't square with you, that night you gave me the recommedation to Mrs. Turner, Miss Lennox. I suppose I ought to've told you all about myself, but I had to get work, an' I knew if I told you I wouldn't get no job. I'd been--I'd been in a house. I wanted to get away, an' a man had just got me out a little more'n a month or so before."