"Leave us look at some of your baby things," said Lena.
We looked. I shall never forget Lena's hands, ungloved, covered with rings and cheap blue and red stones, as those hands moved in and about the heaped-up fineness of the little garments. Of some of the things she did not know the names. The pink and blue crocheted sacks and socks brought her back to them again and again.
"I used to could crochet," she said at length.
But it was before a small white under-skirt that she made her real way of contact. She fingered the white simple trimming, and her look flew to mine.
"My God," she said, "that's 'three-and-five.' I can do that like lightning."
"Get some thread," I said, "and make some...."
She had made nothing yet. She had told me that. Now she lifted and touched for a moment among the heaped-up things that they brought her.
"I've got five dollars," she said, "that I was savin' to get me a swell hat, when I go back. I might—"
I said nothing. It seemed to me that a great thing was happening and that Lena must do it alone. After a little I priced the dimities and muslins in her hearing.