"It seems ridiculous----" Lizette hesitated, the colour rising in her sallow cheeks, "but I'd just _love_ to make beautiful white things--lingerie, you know, like what I sell at the store. It would be next best to having them to wear myself. I don't care so much about the outside things--gowns and hats--but I think it would be just heavenly to have all the underneath things white and lacey, and lovely--don't you think so?" "I never thought of it. You see I don't care about clothes," Olga returned. "Can you sew, Lizette?" Lizette hesitated, then, with a look half shamefaced and half proud, she drew from her bag a bit of linen. "It was a damaged handkerchief. I got it for five cents, at a sale," she explained. "It will make a jabot." "And you did this?" Olga asked. Lizette nodded. "I know it isn't good work, but if I had time I could learn----" "Yes, you could--if you had the time and a few lessons. Are your eyes strong?" The other nodded again. "Strong as they are ugly," she flung out. "Leave this with me for a day or two, will you, Lizette?" "Uh-huh," Lizette returned indifferently. "Give it to you, if you'll take it." "Oh no--it's too pretty. Lizette, you hate it so at Miss Rankin's--why don't you rent a room and get your own meals as I do?" "Couldn't. I'm so dead tired most nights that I'd rather go hungry than get my own supper. Some girls don't seem to mind being on their feet from eight to six, but I can't stand it. Sometimes I get so tired it seems as if I'd rather _die_ than drag through another day of it! And besides--I don't much like the other boarders at Rankin's, but they're better than nobody. To go back at night to an empty room and sit there till bedtime with not a soul to speak to--O, I couldn't stand it. I'd get in a blue funk and end it all some night. I'm tempted to, as it is, sometimes." She added, with a miserable laugh that was half a sob, "Nobody'd care," and Olga heard her own voice saying earnestly, "I'd care, Lizette. You must never, _never_ think a thing like that again!" Lizette searched the other's face with eyes in which sharp suspicion gradually changed into half incredulous joy. "Well," she said slowly, "if one living soul cares even a little bit what happens to me, I'll try to pull through somehow. The Camp Fire's the only thing that has made life endurable to me this past year, and I haven't enjoyed that so awfully much, for nobody there seems to really care--I just hang on to the edges." "Miss Laura cares." "O, in a way, because I belong to her Camp Fire--that's all," returned Lizette moodily. "No, she cares--really," Olga persisted, but Lizette answered only by an incredulous lift of her thin, sandy brows. "I must go now," she said, rising, and with her hands on Olga's shoulders she added, "You don't know what this evening here has meant to me. I--was about at the end of my rope."