In a tiny hall bedroom in one of the small brick houses that cover many blocks in certain sections of Washington, Elizabeth Page was standing a week later, trying to screw up her courage to a deed of daring; and because it was for herself it seemed almost impossible for her to do it. With her white face, her anxious eyes, and trembling hands, she seemed again the Poor Thing who had shrunk from every one those first days at the camp--every one but Olga. Three times Elizabeth started to go downstairs and three times her courage failed and she drew back. So long as she waited there was a chance--a very faint one, but still a chance--that the thing she so desired might come true. But the minutes were slipping away, and finally, setting her lips desperately, she fairly ran down the stairs. Her stepmother glanced up with a frown as the girl stood before her. "Well, what now?" she demanded, in the sharp, fretful tone of one whose nerves are all a-jangle. "I've done everything--all the supper work, and fixed everything in the kitchen ready for morning," Elizabeth said, her words tumbling over each other in her excitement, "and O, please may I go this evening--to Miss Laura's? It's the Camp Fire meeting, and one of the girls is going to stop here for me, and--and O, I'll do _anything_ if only I may go!" The frown on the woman's face deepened as Elizabeth stumbled on, and her answer was swift and sharp. "You are not going one step out of this house to-night--you can make up your mind to that--not one step. I knew when I let you go off to that camp that it would be just this way. Girls like you are never satisfied. You want the earth. Here you've had a month--a whole month--off in the country while I stood in that hot kitchen and did your work for you, and now you are teasing to go stringing off again. You are _not going_." "But," pleaded Elizabeth desperately, "I've worked so hard to-day--every minute since five o'clock--and I washed and ironed Sadie's white dress before supper. If there was any work I had to do it would be different. And--and even servant girls have an afternoon and evening off every week, and I never do. And I'm only asking now to go out one evening in a month--just _one_!" "There it is again!" Mrs. Page flung out. "Not this one evening, but an evening every month; and if I agreed to that, next thing you'd be wanting to go every week. I tell you--_no_. Now let that end it." The tears welled up in Elizabeth's eyes as she turned slowly away; and the sight of those tears awakened a tumult in another quarter. Four-year-old Molly had been rocking her Teddy Bear to sleep when Elizabeth came downstairs, and had listened, wide-eyed and wondering, to all that passed. But tears in Elizabeth's eyes were too much. The Teddy Bear tumbled unheeded to the floor as Molly rushed across to Elizabeth and, clinging to her skirts, turned a small flushed face to her mother.