as so easy to make her mixed and troubled,
and all helpless, for she could never learn to know just what the
other quicker girls meant by the queer things they said.

The two or three of these girls, the ones that Lena always sat with,
always worked together to confuse her. Still it was pleasant, all this
life for Lena.

The little girl fell down sometimes and cried, and then Lena had to
soothe her. When the little girl would drop her hat, Lena had to pick
it up and hold it. When the little girl was bad and threw away her
playthings, Lena told her she could not have them and took them from
her to hold until the little girl should need them.

It was all a peaceful life for Lena, almost as peaceful as a pleasant
leisure. The other girls, of course, did tease her, but then that only
made a gentle stir within her.

Lena was a brown and pleasant creature, brown as blonde races
often have them brown, brown, not with the yellow or the red or the
chocolate brown of sun burned countries, but brown with the clear
color laid flat on the light toned skin beneath, the plain, spare
brown that makes it right to have been made with hazel eyes, and not
too abundant straight, brown hair, hair that only later deepens itself
into brown from the straw yellow of a german childhood.

Lena had the flat chest, straight back and forward falling shoulders
of the patient and enduring working woman, though her body was now
still in its milder girlhood and work had not yet made these lines too
clear.

The rarer feeling that there was with Lena, showed in all the even
quiet of her body movements, but in all it was the strongest in the
patient, old-world ignorance, and earth made pureness of her brown,
flat, soft featured face. Lena had eyebrows that were a wondrous
thickness. They were black, and spread, and very cool, with their dark
color and their beauty, and beneath them were her hazel eyes, simple
and human, with the earth patience of the working, gentle, german
woman.

Yes it was all a peaceful life for Lena. The other girls, of course,
did tease her, but then that only made a gentle stir within her.

"What you got on your finger Lena," Mary, one of the girls she always
sat with, one day asked her. Mary was good natured, quick, intelligent
and Irish.

Lena had just picked up the fancy paper made accordion that the little
girl had dropped beside her, and was making it squeak sadly as she
pulled it with her brown, strong, awkward fing