“You’re a sinner, all right, Carmencita Bell, and there’s no natural goodness in you.  You hate hideousness, and poorness, and other people’s cast-offs, and emptiness in your stomach, and living on the top floor with crying babies and a drunken father underneath, and counting every stick of wood before you use it.  And you get furious at times because your father is blind and people have forgotten about his beautiful music, and you want chicken and cake when you haven’t even enough bacon and bread.  You’re a sinner, all right.  If you were in a class of them you would be at the head.  It’s the only thing you’d ever be at the head of.  You know you’re poverty-poor, and still you’re always fighting inside, always making out that it is just for a little while.  Why don’t you—­”

The words died on her lips, and suddenly the clear blue eyes, made for love and laughter and eager for all that is lovely in life, dimmed with hot tears, and with a half-sob she turned and threw herself face downward on the rug-covered cot on the opposite side of the room.

“O God, please don’t let Father know!” The words came in tones that were terrified.  “Please don’t ever let him know!  I wasn’t born good, and I hate bad smells, and dirty things, and ugly clothes, and not enough to eat, but until I am big enough to go to work please, please help me to keep Father from knowing!  Please help me!”

With a twisting movement the child curled herself into a little ball, and for a moment tempestuous sobbing broke the stillness of the room, notwithstanding the knuckles of two little red hands which were pressed to the large sweet mouth.  Presently she lifted the hem of her skirt and wiped her eyes, then she got up.

“I wish I could cry as much as I want to.  I never have had a place convenient to do it all by myself, and there’s never time, but it gets the choked things out and makes you feel much better.  I don’t often want to, just sometimes, like before Christmas when you’re crazy to do a lot of things you can’t do—­and some people make you so mad!  If I’d been born different and not minding ugly things and loving pretty ones, I wouldn’t have hated that hat so.  That’s gone, anyhow.  I’ve been wanting to see how high I could kick it ever since Miss Cattie sent it to me, and now I’ve done it.  I’ve got a lot of old clothes I’d like to send to Ballyhack, but I can’t send.”

She stopped, smoothed her rumpled dress, and shook back the long loose curls which had fallen over her face.  “I must be getting sorry for myself.  If I am I ought to be spanked.  I can’t spank, but I can dance.  If you don’t head it off quick it goes to your liver.  I’ll head!”

With a swift movement Carmencita sprang across the room and from the mantel took down a once beribboned but now faded and worn tambourine.  “You’d rather cry,” she said, under her breath, “but you sha’n’t cry.  I won’t let you.  Dance!  Dance!  Dance!”