le?"

She sat twirling the cord upon which the dozens of great brass rings
were strung, watching the shining ellipse they made as they
revolved,--like a child set down upon the carpet with a
plaything,--expecting no answer, only waiting for the next vagrant
whimsicality that should come across her brain,--not altogether without
method, either,--to give it utterance.

"I don't suppose I could convince you of it," she resumed; "but I do
actually have serious thoughts sometimes. I think that very likely some
of us--most of us--are going to the dogs. And I wonder what it will be
when we get there. Why don't you contradict, or confirm, what I say,
Miss Craydocke?"

"You haven't said out, yet, have you?"

Sin Saxon opened wide her great, wondering, saucy blue eyes, and turned
them full upon Miss Craydocke's face. "Well, you _are_ a oner! as
somebody in Dickens says. There's no such thing as a leading question
for you. It's like the rope the dog slipped his head out of, and left
the man holding fast at the other end, in touching confidence that he
was coming on. I saw that once on Broadway. Now I experience it. I
suppose I've got to say more. Well, then, in a general way, do you think
living amounts to anything, Miss Craydocke?"

"Whose living?"

"Sharp--as a knife that's just cut through a lemon! _Ours_, then, if you
please; us girls', for instance."

"You haven't done much of your living yet, my dear." The tone was
gentle, as of one who looked down from such a height of years that she
felt tenderly the climbing that had been, for those who had it yet to
do.

"We're as busy at it, too, as we can be. But sometimes I've mistrusted
something like what I discovered very indignantly one day when I was
four years old, and fancied I was making a petticoat, sewing through
and through a bit of flannel. The thread hadn't any knot in it!"

"That was very well, too, until you knew just where to put the stitches
that should stay."

"Which brings us to our subject of the morning, as the sermons say
sometimes, when they're half through, or ought to be. There are all
kinds of stitches,--embroidery, and plain over-and-over, and whippings,
and darns! When are we to make our knot and begin? and which kind are we
to do?"

"Most lives find occasion, more or less, for each. Practiced fingers
will know how to manage all."

"But--it's--the--pro_por_tion!" cried Sin, in a crescendo that ended
with an emphasis that was nearly a little