"Huh! Seems to me stenography was all right yesterday! What's happened to make you change your mind? Did that Hawes fellow say something to you last night at the Island?" Ellen had decided that the family were not to know the details of the previous night's adventure and, before they came down in the morning, she had pledged Rosie to secrecy. Yet some sort of explanation had to be offered. She looked at Terry now with a candour that was new to her and that did much to win his support. "Terry," she began slowly, with none of her usual aggressiveness, "you always thought my going to that business college and trying to do office work was foolish. You've said so all along. I didn't use to believe you were right but I do now. I'd never do decent office work in a hundred years. I'm sorry all the money you and dad had to put up and I'll pay you back if I can." "Gee!" murmured Terry in astonishment, "you sure must have got some blowing up to make you feel that way about it!" "Well, that's the way I do feel," Ellen said quietly. "But, Ellen," Mrs. O'Brien wailed, "you don't mean it--I know you don't! Why, what'll you do if you throw up this fine position with Mr. Hawes? Nowadays a girl can't sit at home and do nothing! She's either got to work or get married." Mrs. O'Brien paused with a new idea which her own words suggested to her. "Is it--is it that you're getting married?" Ellen spoke quickly: "Ma, I expect to work and I'm going to work. But I'm going to do something I can do well." "That you can do well!" echoed Mrs. O'Brien. "I don't rightly catch your meanin', Ellen. Here you've landed a fine position and your boss is a nice friendly gentleman and now you're turning your back on it all to take up something else! I don't understand you at all, at all! And to think," Mrs. O'Brien concluded brokenly, "of the skirts and shirtwaists that I've stayed up all hours of the night to iron for you, just to keep you lookin' sweet and clean down at that office!" "Ma, I'm sorry to disappoint you--honest I am. But, don't you see, it's just this way: I've made a bad mistake and the sooner I get out of it the better it will be for me. What I ought to do is something I can do." "Something you can do, indeed! And will you tell me, me lady, what is it you can do so much better than stenography?" Ellen flushed but answered firmly: "I can trim hats." "Trim hats!" screamed Mrs. O'Brien. "What's this ye're sayin'? Do you mean to tell me that you're willing to be a milliner when you might be a stenographer? Why, anybody at all can go and be a milliner!" "Anybody can't be a fine milliner. And you needn't think there isn't good money in millinery. The head of a big millinery department gets a couple of thousand a year!"