no special need of knowing, and very few I can make use of down here."

"You didn't expect to come down here when you were learning things,
did you?" Carmencita's eyes were gravely watching the efforts being
made to thread the machine's needle. "I guess when you were a little
girl you didn't know there were things like you see down here. What
made you come here, Miss Frances? You didn't have to. What made you
come?"

Into the fine fair face color crept slowly, and for a moment a sudden
frown ridged the high forehead from which the dark hair, parted and
brushed back, waved into a loose knot at the back of her head; then
she laughed, and her dark eyes looked into Carmencita's blue ones.

"Why did I come?" The gingham dress on which she had been sewing was
folded carefully. "I came to find out some of the things I did not
know about. I wasn't of any particular use to anybody else. No one
needed me. I had a life on my hands that I didn't know what to do
with, and I thought perhaps--"

"You could use it down here? You could use a dozen down here, but you
weren't meant not to get married. Aren't you ever going to get
married, Miss Frances?"

"I hardly think I will." Frances Barbour got up and pushed the machine
against the wall. "The trouble about getting married is marrying the
right man. One so often doesn't. I wouldn't like to make a mistake."
Again she smiled.

"Don't see how you could make a mistake. Isn't there some way you can