's pretty?" she asked.

"O _yes_!" Elizabeth breathed softly. She did not touch the necklace,
but gazed admiringly at the bright-coloured beads as they lay in her
lap.

"You can have one like it if you want," Olga told her.

"O no! Who'd give me one?"

"Nobody. But you can get it for yourself. See here--I got all those blue
beads by learning about the wild flowers that grow right around here,
the weeds and stones and animals and birds. You can get as many in a few
days. I got that green one for making a little bit of a basket,
that--for making my washstand there out of a soap box--that, for
trimming my hat. Every bead on that necklace is there because of some
little thing I did or made--all things that you can do too."

The Poor Thing shook her head. "O _no_," she stammered in her weak
gentle voice, "I can't do anything. I--I ain't like other girls."

"You can be if you want to," Olga flung out at her impatiently.
"Say--what _can_ you do? You can do something."

"No--nothing." The Poor Thing's blue eyes filled slowly with big tears,
and she looked through them beseechingly at the other. Olga drew a long
exasperated breath. She wanted to take hold of the girl's thin shoulders
and shake the limpness out of her once for all.

"What did you do at home?" she demanded with harsh abruptness.

"N--nothing," Elizabeth answered with a miserable gulp.

"You did too! Of course you did something," Olga flamed. "You didn't sit
and stare at Molly and the others all day the way you stare at me, did
you? _What_ did you do, I say?"

Elizabeth gave her a swift scared glance as she stammered, "I didn't do
anything but cook and sweep and wash and iron and take care of the
children--truly I didn't."

Olga's face brightened. "Good heavens--if you aren't the limit!" she
shrugged. Then she sprang up and got pencil and paper. "What can you
cook?" she demanded, and proceeded to put Elizabeth through a rapid-fire
examination on marketing, plain cooking, washing, ironing, sweeping,
bed-making, and care of babies. At last she had found some things that
even the Poor Thing could do. With flying fingers she scribbled down the
girl's answers. Finally she cried excitingly, "_There!_ See what a goose
you were to say you couldn't do anything! Why, there are lots of girls
here who couldn't do half these things. Elizabeth Page, listen. You've
got twelve orange beads like those," she pointed to the
necklace--"already, for a beginning. That's mo