ou love me, take
those slips back to the kind lady who let me have them to play with. Make
her pay you a dollar for the dozen, and don't let her deduct more than a
dollar for the upside-downness of the sleeves. Tell her they're prettier
that way, anyway. And, Catharine, do please rub me with some healing
lotion or something,--for I'm as lame as a jelly-fish!"

"Patty," said Nan, solemnly, "the occasion requires strong language. So I
will remark in all seriousness, that, you do beat all!"

CHAPTER X

THE CLEVER GOLDFISH

FINANCIALLY, Patty came out just even on her 'white work,' for though the
woman paid Nan the dollar for the dozen finished garments, she deducted
the same amount for the wrongly placed sleeves.

She also grumbled at the long machine stitch Patty had used, but Nan's
patience was exhausted, and giving the woman a calm stare, she walked out
of the shop.

"It's perfectly awful," she said to Patty, when relating her adventure,
"to think of the poor girls who are really trying to earn their living by
white work. It's all very well for you, who are only experimenting, but
suppose a real worker gets all her pay deducted!"

"There's hardly enough pay to pay for deducting it, anyway," said Patty.
"Oh, Nan, it is dreadful! I suppose lots of poor girls who feel as tired
and lame as I do this morning, have to go straight back to their
sewing-machine and run it all day."

"Of course they do; and often they're of delicate constitutions, and
insufficiently nourished."

"It makes me feel awful. Things are unevenly divided in this world,
aren't they, Nan?"

"They are, my dear; but as that problem has baffled wiser heads than
yours, it's useless for you to worry over it. You can't reform the
world."

"No; and I don't intend to try. But I can do something to help. I know I
can. That's where people show their lack of a sense of proportion. I know
I can't do anything for the world, as a world, but if I can help in a few
individual cases, that will be my share. For instance, if I can help this
Christine Farley to an art education, and so to a successful career, why
that's so much to the good. And though father has set me a hard task to
bring it about, I'm going to do it yet."

"Your father wouldn't have set you such a task if you hadn't declared it
was no task at all! You said you could earn your living easily in a dozen
different ways. Already you've discarded two."

"That leaves me ten!" said Patty,