"Why, that's the best little skeleton of contention around here. There's three factions. Some girls say she's just plain devil--mean as a floor-walker. That's what I think--she's a rotter and a four-flusher. You notice the way she crawls when I stand up to her. Why, they won't have Catholics here, and I'm one of those wicked people, and she knows it! When she asked my religion I told her I was a 'Romanist Episcopalian,' and she sniffed and put me down as an Episcopalian--I saw her!... Then some of the girls think she's really good-hearted--just gruff--bark worse than her bite. But you ought to see how she barks at some of the younger girls--scares 'em stiff--and keeps picking on them about regulations--makes their lives miserable. Then there's a third section that thinks she's merely institutionalized--training makes her as hard as any other kind of a machine. You'll find lots like her in this town--in all the charities." "But the girls--they do have a good time here?" "Yes, they do. It's sort of fun to fight Ma Fike and all the fool rules. I enjoy smoking here twice as much as I would anywhere else. And Fike isn't half as bad as the board of visitors--bunch of fat, rich, old Upper-West-Siders with passementeried bosoms, doing tea-table charity, and asking us impertinent questions, and telling a bunch of hard-worked slaves to be virtuous and wash behind their ears--the soft, ignorant, conceited, impractical parasites! But still, it's all sort of like a cranky boarding-school for girls--and you know what fun the girls have there, with midnight fudge parties and a teacher pussy-footing down the hall trying to catch them." "I don't know. I've never been to one." "Well--doesn't matter.... Another thing--some day, when you come to know more men-- Know many?" "Very few." "Well, you'll find this town is full of bright young men seeking an economical solution of the sex problem--to speak politely--and you'll find it a relief not to have them on your door-step. 'S safe here.... Come in with me, kid. Give me an audience to talk to." "Yes," said Una. § 2 It was hard to leave the kindly Herbert Grays of the flat, but Una made the break and arranged all her silver toilet-articles--which consisted of a plated-silver hair-brush, a German-silver nail-file, and a good, plain, honest rubber comb--on the bureau in Mrs. Lawrence's room. With the shyness of a girl on her first night in boarding-school, Una stuck to Mrs. Lawrence's side in the noisy flow of strange girls down to the dining-room. She was used to being self-absorbed in the noisiest restaurants, but she was trembly about the knees as she crossed the room among curious upward glances; she found it very hard to use a fork without clattering it on the plate when she sat with Mrs. Lawrence and four strangers, at a table for six.