Nancy, frail in body and in parts of her brain, was surprisingly strong in others. In the back of her head she knew that when a woman of Marcia’s appearance and ability walked into such a shop as she had been keeping, and regenerated it and straightened the business into a hopeful concern in a few weeks’ time, she was not an ordinary woman; she had reasons of her own for being where she was and doing what she did. But the results were so gratifying to Nancy Bodkin that she shut her lips tight and drove her capable needle through flower stems, folded velvet, and buckram with precision and force. She said to her heart: “I don’t care where she came from. I don’t care who she is. I don’t care what any one thinks about her. She’s awful pretty. She’s smart as a whip. She’s clean as a ribbon, and what’s it of my business, or any one else’s except her own, as to why she’s here? I am good and thankful to have her, and there had better not any one poke around and hurt her feelings or they’ll get a piece of my mind. The present and the Golden Egg are good enough for me.” That night Marcia capped the climax that she had reached in Nancy Bodkin’s heart by a masterly stroke. In the privacy of their mutual room, after the store was closed for the day, she washed Nancy’s hair, dried and brushed it to silkiness. The following morning she curled it and laid it in becoming waves and braids upon her well-shaped head. She applied some of the powder that she used upon her own nose to the nose of Nancy Bodkin, and performed a sleight-of-hand miracle upon her lips and cheeks. When Nancy looked into her mirror, she did not know herself. She did not ever want to know herself again as she had been. She was so perfectly delighted with what she saw within her grasp by a few months of work, that she had no words in which to express her feeling. The next thing she knew, Marcia came into the store with a piece of goods that she cut up, and in spare time, fashioned into a most attractive dress for Nancy.