"That doesn't answer my question. Why did you not ask permission?"

The girl slowly raised her two hands, and showed her shapely wrists
close together, and a bit of the forearm not covered by the sleeve of
her black dress.

"Because," she said slowly, "the shackles have fallen from these
wrists."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," said Sabina, apparently
impressed in spite of herself, but the younger daughter clapped her
hands rapturously.

"Splendid, splendid, Dorothy," she cried. "I don't know what you mean
either, but you look like Maxine Elliott in that play where she--"

"Will you keep quiet!" interrupted the elder sister over her shoulder.

"I mean that I intend to sew here no longer," proclaimed Dorothy.

"Oh, Miss Amhurst, Miss Amhurst," bemoaned the matron. "You will
heartlessly leave us in this crisis when we are helpless; when there
is not a sewing woman to be had in the place for love or money. Every
one is working night and day to be ready for the ball on the
fourteenth, and you-- you whom we have nurtured--"

"I suppose she gets more money," sneered the elder daughter bitterly.

"Oh, Dorothy," said Katherine, coming a step forward and clasping her
hands, "do you mean to say I must attend the ball in a calico dress