y, and it was
second nature to her, but no one had ever drummed it into her what a
crime against culture an illiterate way of speaking could be. She never
got into the way of speaking that way herself, but it seemed a part of
these people she had come to know and admire so thoroughly, as much as
for a rose to have thorns, and so she did not mind it. Her other world
had been so all-wrong for years that the hardships of this one were
nothing. She watched them patch and sacrifice cheerfully to buy their
few little plain coarse new things. She marveled at their sweetness and
content, where those of her world would have thought they could not
exist under the circumstances.

She learned to make that good stew with carrots and celery and parsley
and potatoes and the smallest possible amount of meat, that had tasted
so delicious the night she arrived. She learned the charms of the common
little bean, and was proud indeed the day she set upon the table a
luscious pan of her own baking, rich and sweet and brown with their
coating of molasses well baked through them. She even learned to make
bread and never let any one guess that she had always supposed it
something mysterious.

During the week that Nellie was preparing to go to the city, Betty had
lessons in sewing. Nellie would bring down an old garment, so faded and
worn that it would seem only fit for the rag-bag. She would rip and
wash, dye with a mysterious little package of stuff, press, and behold,
there would come forth pretty breadths of cloth, blue or brown or green,
or whatever color was desired. It seemed like magic. And then a box of
paper-patterns would be brought out, and the whole evening would be
spent in contriving how to get out a dress, with the help of trimmings
or sleeves of another material. Betty would watch and gradually try to
help, but she found there were so many strange things to be considered.
There, for instance, was the up and down of a thing and the right and
wrong of it. It was exactly like life. And one had to plan not to have
both sleeves for one arm, and to have the nap of the goods running down
always. It was as complicated as learning a new language. But at the end
of the week there came forth two pretty dresses and a blouse. Betty, as
she sat sewing plain seams and trying to help all she could, kept
thinking of the many beautiful frocks she had thrown aside in the years
gone by, and of the rich store of pretty things that she had left when