CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHTSelina, reaching home a bit before dinner, read and re-read her note from Mrs. Jones. The springs in Virginia! She felt she knew all that this meant, and knew, too, what it would mean to be the young guest of Mrs. Samuel Jones at her cottage at these springs!After dinner, for some reason she couldn't define, she took the note, not to her mother, but her father. He was alone downstairs with his paper. He looked worn and tired, even a bit broken and haggard. Standing by his chair while he read the letter, she slipped an arm about his shoulders, though again she could not have explained why. His free hand went up, sought her hand there on his shoulder and closed on it.He sat quite still after he had finished the reading, his eyes on the sheet of paper lowered to his knee. For a full minute he did not speak. Then:"Tuttle has made no secret of what he means, Selina. Let's be very honest about it. Are you ready then to accept this invitation at his mother's hands?""Papa!" piteously."Unless your own mind is quite made up, I don'tthink you can accept it. How about it? Do you know what you want?""Papa!" this time beseechingly."For a full minute he did not speak.""Think it over, little daughter, and then come back and tell me what you decide.""I have thought it over, Papa.""The world and the flesh and a very decent and reputable young fellow, Selina?""Papa, please don't!""Come around here to me, where I can look at you, Selina." And when she had come, and he had drawn her down on the arm of the chair, he took her face in his hand and studied it, the eyes above all. Then he stood up, drew her to him and kissed her."We'll decide you won't go, little daughter. Let us say it's a case where we'll give the doubt the benefit for a while yet.""Must I tell Mamma about the note, and about my answer to it, Papa?""Certainly. Why do you ask?""She's going to be put out. It's almost a pity she has to know. And, Papa, I'm worried about the money she's spending on clothes for me this summer! She's done it because she's pleased to have me going with Tuttle."Selina stood before the mirror in her room, dressing for a barge party up the river. It was the first one of the season and the program was always the same. The crowd met in couples at some agreed on starting-point near the street-car line. On this occasion Cousin Anna's front porch was to be that spot by permission. From here they went down in the car to the river, descended the steep levee to the boathouse, and getting started a moment or so before sunset, if they had luck, rowed up the river a dozen miles to a certain favored spot, ate supper and floating down after the moon was up, reached theboathouse in time for an hour's dancing before going home.With care, Selina told herself as she stood there at her mirror, one can wear a best white dress on such an affair and not get ittoodabby. She'd compromise by wearing a ribbon belt and not a sash. Culpepper didn't dance, didn't care for foolishness, was the way he put it, but was going. So were Preston Cannon and Mr. Welling. The rooms over the confectionery were given up, and the three were leaving for their homes in the state to-morrow. Mr. Tate had already gone, sailing from New York for Germany this very day.Tuttle Jones was not of the party, which consisted of Selina's world, a world that Tuttle didn't trouble with.He had been very nice over her declining his mother's invitation."I was afraid perhaps you wouldn't see your way to it," he said. "I'll only be there with my mother two weeks anyhow. We can put in a very decent time here together, at home."Selina, her dressing completed, caught up her jacket from the bed and went into her mother's room. Culpepper was downstairs waiting for her. "Mamma, will I do? It's the end of the old things, you know, a real breaking up, and I want to look nice.""I thought you were saving that dress to go with Tuttle to call on his cousins to-morrow night," fromMamma. "The older one would have done perfectly well. Yes, you took very nice.""You look more than nice," from Auntie emphatically. "You're looking your best, Selina. If you need the dress for to-morrow night, I'll press it for you."Cousin Anna's porch was gay with the assembled bevy of them. Mr. Welling was with Maud, Mr. Cannon with Adele, and Bliss—yes, poor foolish Bliss, for the last time and at his own behest—was with Amanthus. Then there were Tommy and Tod Bacon and their visiting girl cousins and Brent Wild and Sam Rand for extras. Cousin Anna came out on the porch and shook hands around and laughed at their nonsense and pressed ice-water upon them. Nobody wanted any but still that was a good deal from Cousin Anna in the way of hospitality.Amanthus spoke of her plans to Selina and Maud while they were waiting for Juliette and Algy to come. She was sweet and definite."Mamma and I are going on to Narragansett and then Bar Harbor, the day after to-morrow. I had a note from your Mr. Cyril Doe, Selina, the other day, I haven't seen you to tell you, written from Ottawa, and hewillbe in Bar Harbor like he said. Later in the summer Mamma and I go to England and Mr. Tate will meet us there, and we'll be married in London.""What'll you call him?" from Maud, which wasaltogether nasty of her. "You can't bring yourself to say Lemuel, can you?""Lemuel is a very good name," from Amanthus with dignity, "and besides his middle name is Worthington and we'll probably call him that."Algy and Juliette came hurrying up just as the rest of them, tired of waiting, were boarding the street car.Juliette across the car aisle, now they could see her, looked pale. She had on her last winter's scarlet coat over a last summer's old white dress and looked dabby, poor, little, dark-eyed gypsy. But when a girlwon'ttake the money her father offers her to buy any new summer clothes——She had studied too hard, they all knew that. And for nothing. The examinations were but two days off now, in Cincinnati. There had been a final scene and row at her house recently, when she demanded again of her father that she be allowed to go, and again was refused with an almost brutal outburst of temper."And he said I'm under age," Juliette told Selina and Maud the day after this, "and if I ran off and started as I intimated I'd do, he could bring me back."Juliette with Algy at her side was with the crowd as they left the car, and with baskets, wraps, and what not, went down the steep, rock-paved levee, to the river at its foot, rolling broad and serene, the evening ferryboats just starting on their pilgrimages,and a steamboat here and there laid up at its wharf, the red of the sun at the horizon line, turning their white paint to rosiness.And Juliette and Algy went aboard the boathouse with them, everybody again was sure of that. Though the men couldn't recall that Algy was at his locker when they were at their own, getting into boating togs, and the girls spending their time out on the guards looking at the sunset on the water could not remember Juliette being with them.One thing was sure. After the two barges were well started under the long strokes of the rowers, and as far on their way as the upper bridge, it was discovered that neither boat contained Juliette or Algy.A halt following this discovery and a bringing of the barges alongside each other brought a bit of testimony from Tod Bacon."I saw them in one of the sculls before we got the barges out of the boathouse. I reckon they've plans of their own."There was a good deal of grumbling over the absence of Algy when they landed for supper on the high, woody bank that overswept the river up and down in a mighty stretch of view. Algy always built the fire, and went to the nearest farmhouse for water, and fetched and carried generally.The girls were unpacking the baskets and Maud had produced a tablecloth."Here, give me the bucket and I'll get the water,"grumbled Culpepper, "but the rest of you fellows busy yourselves with the fire."It was wonderful always, floating back those twelve miles downstream by moonlight. And such moonlight as there was to-night! One wondered what Amanthus found to say to Bliss. Culpepper with his orange and black blazer over his boating togs was lolling back in the stern of their barge beside Selina, and she said as much to him.He answered good-humoredly, "It isn't Amanthus' business in life to say, as she's often told you. She won't try to say."Tod Bacon, that nice boy, and Sam Rand, had their mandolins. Their clever picking of the strings ting-ling-a-linged over the broad waters."Honey, I'm going home to-morrow," said Culpepper, laying hold of a bit of Selina's jacket as it lay unused on her lap and openly fondling it while his eyes sought her face in the moonlight. "You haven't let me talk to you yet? What are you going to do about it?"And here Culpepper's hand, his big, firm hand leaving the cloak he had used for a blind, found her hand.Culpepper took what he wanted of life and people! She had said so before! And resented it!She regained her hand. He didn't seem to hold it against her and went back to his fondling of the jacket. "What you going to do about it, honey?""Tell you good-bye and a nice summer," said Selina briskly, moving her jacket. "I don't want to hear you talk, as you call it, Culpepper.""Well, I'll be back," from this young gentleman, still without resentment. "My mother has entered me in the best law firm in your town; isn't she the first-class fellow? And I come down to start in August."Patently Juliette and Algy did have their own plans and as patently didn't care to discuss them. They were at the boat-club waiting when the others arrived, and it was plain they neither of them cared to talk. Juliette's white dress under the scarlet coat looked dabbier, and she was altogether pale.She danced a little with the rest of them at the start, Tod Bacon, blessed boy, at the piano, but after that sat by herself, tired, she said. But when Algy, after prowling in the lunch baskets, brought her a sandwich and a bottle with shrub in it, she obediently ate the one, and when he had found a glass and got ice from the janitor, drank the other.Algy, big, splendid dear, looked pale himself, and with his straight features so unwontedly grown-up and stern, even looked gaunt.Mr. Welling, romping rather than waltzing by with one of the Bacon cousins, called to Algy."'Oh, swiftly glides the bonnie scull!'Or did it, Algy?""Aw, I don't know what you mean," said Algy crossly. "Lemme alone, can't you, Welling?"The next morning they learned what the temporary disappearance of Juliette and Algy the night before meant. The Wistars were at breakfast when Maud came flying over and into the dining-room. In her blue gingham dress, her red-brown hair was glorious, but her eyes were big and her cheeks white.At sight of her, Selina in a fresh gingham herself, divined something amiss and rose to meet her. Maud in her blue dress, threw herself upon Selina in her pink one, and burst into tears. "Juliette went across the river last night when we missed her, and was married to Algy!"Selina clutched at Maud and they stayed each other. The exclamations of Mamma and Auntie, and the question or two from Papa, reached them, as it were, from far away.Then Maud recovered herself. She had a tale to unfold and must be at the business! "I was at my window dressing, up a bit earlier than usual to work on my German verses, at my bay window, Selina, that looks out on the Caldwells. And I saw Algy arrive and come round the side way, and whistle real softly under Juliette's window. And after a minute Juliette came out the side-door with her hat and jacket and her gloves on, carrying her satchel. And I called to 'em and hurried down and met 'em at the gate and they told me they were married last night. Algy had come round to take her and put her on the train for Cincinnati. He entered her by telegraph last night for the examinations as Juliette Caldwell Biggs. She isn't of age, you see, Mr. Wistar, and her father told her he'd stop her if she tried to go.""And whistled real softly under Juliette's window.""Judy!" from Selina, weeping anew. "That little, tiny, pretty, breakable Judy!""I've known little tiny, pretty people myself," from Papa with humor. "It doesn't always preclude determination.""Determination," retorted Mamma. "I don't know what you mean, Mr. Wistar. I call it self-will in Juliette that's outrageous.""Mamma!" from Selina."I haven't finished," from Maudie, wiping her eyes and looking up. "After she's taken her examination, she's going to her college cousin up in Ohio, to wait and see if she passes. But she'll pass, we all know Juliette. And from there she'll enter college next fall. Juliette's written letters to send back to her grandfathers to see if either of them will help her through her college course with money. And if they won't she'll let Algy lend her enough to get her through.""Algy!" from Mamma, scandalized, "doesn't she realize he's herhusband?""Algy put her throughcollege?" from Auntie bewildered. "Doesn't she understand she'smarried?"Maud looked startled. She seemed to be seeing it in this light for the first time herself. "I—I don't believe she does. I don't believe it's occurred to Juliette that way at all. But," brightening, "Algy won'texpect her to. He's sure to understand. He's always been that way; hasn't he, Selina?"Selina nodded in corroboration."Accommodating, you know," further elucidated Maud, "and—er—perfectly willing to be—well—an expedient.""Expedient!" from Mamma, "And you're speaking of the girl'shusband?""Glorious," from Papa. "We've often thought it about ourselves, we husbands, but it takes the younger generation to admit it.""I don't like this levity," from Auntie, "my head's all in a whirl and I don't understand," piteously. "Marriage is a solemn thing and carries heavy obligations. Hasn't she thought at all of what a very great deal she's taking for granted in this young man? In Algy?"Darling Auntie!"Selina," from her father, "take your auntie's cup out to Viney and get her some fresh coffee. I do believe she's honestly pale. Woman's being driven willy-nilly, to and fro, up and down, finding herself these days, don't you realize that, big Sis? What's a mere Algy or two in the final issue?""Marriage is a solemn thing and carries obligations," insisted Auntie still piteously. Then she rose for her to vast heights. "For a woman to marry for any end but the one, is like using the chalice of the holy sacrament as a basket to carry her own wares to market."CHAPTER THIRTY-NINEMamma, who so rarely betrayed herself by an open admission of her real state of mind, sat by the window crying softly. Auntie, at her window, moved heavily as through the act to expend some of her ponderous energy."I've always felt theremustbe something wrong with our way of managing, Lavinia? Do you suppose it would have worked better if we'd ever had aplanto fit our expenses to, or made Robert agree as to justwhatwe might have to go on?""If you think you could have done it better than I have, Ann Eliza—" from Mamma, a bright spot on either cheek as she raised her head and faced her sister-in-law. Little lady, only forty-two now, and meant by heaven to be pretty if instead she had not to be so anxiously perturbed!"How badisit, Lavinia?" from Auntie.A light footstep sounded along the hall and Selina paused in her mother's doorway. It was September and, after the long summer, pleasures and activities were starting up. She had been to the theater with Tuttle last night, and this morning was allowed to have her sleep out. Here athalf-past nine she was just coming up from her breakfast!This Selina standing there in the doorway, looking from her mother to her aunt, was nineteen now and past, but beneath something of gravity now in the face under the very lovely hair, she still was sweet and loving and anxious."How badisit, Lavinia?" Auntie was saying.Mamma looking across to the door saw her child. "Come in, Selina. You've heard as much, and you may as well hear the rest. There's no money for Viney. Last month's bills all lapsed over because Robert told me I'd have to wait. And now they've come in with this month's bills. The iceman's been here three times."Here Mamma's hands dropped into her lap with a gesture that carried dismay to the others. It was the gesture of one who abjures any further responsibility, of one who steps aside. No defence was left in her, no air of anxious justification. She would state the whole, her manner seemed to say, without reserve and without mincing, and let somebody else face the issue.The face of this older Selina, standing there in the doorway, had gathered something of decision, too, and something of the inner steady flame that comes with this gain in character."How has Papa explained it, Mamma? What did he say when he told you that you would have to wait?""He didn't explain and I didn't like to ask. It's been clear he was worried all along through the summer.""Mamma, I think you should have asked. Or I think Papa should have told you, so you wouldn't have to ask."Mamma made no defence, showed no disposition to reprove, or yet to resent. She searched around for her pocket-handkerchief again, found it, and resumed her crying."You said something about it to Robert at the breakfast table this morning, Lavinia?" reminded Auntie.Mamma conceded this from behind the handkerchief at her eyes."You said, 'Robert, you didn't get in from the office till one o'clock last night, and you didn't come up to bed till past three? Whatisthe matter? And this thing of no money again for the bills? Whatdoesit all mean?'"Mamma lifted her head again. Her spirit had returned. "And he said," she spoke indignantly, "'For God's sake, Lavinia, when I'm trying to spare you as long as I can, don't come at me now with questions.' I didn't ask him to spare me!" with spirit. "I'm tired of pretending his way of keeping me in the dark's right. I've been pretending so when I didn't feel so for twenty years. I'm going to say it out now. And I didn't ask him to spare me. I asked him to tell me.""Mamma, little Mamma!" from Selina, hurrying across the room to her side."Of course I wasn't competent at first, and proved I couldn't be trusted with money and the rest of it. I never had been trusted with anything. My mother bought my clothes and my father took the bills from her and paid them. But it doesn't go to prove I couldn't have been made trustworthy if Robert had been patient and showed me a little and trusted me till I could.""Lavinia," from Auntie piteously, "I've misjudged you. You wouldn't criticize Robert and you wouldn't allow anyone else to criticize him before you?"Mamma had resumed her soft crying and Selina was on her knees by her, trying to comfort her."Have you any idea whatisthe matter, Mamma? The matter with Papa's affairs, I mean?""He's been worried all summer, and you've seen for yourself how haggard he's come to be. There was some talk of his losing his two best agencies last spring. The rest of the business doesn't amount to much, and I'm afraid it must be that he's lost them.""Mamma, don't you think we've a right to know? I'll go down to him at his office now, if you're willing I may, and ask him? I'll dress and go down to him, if you'll let me?""I'm through," said her mother, "I feel that I've failed. The heart's gone out of me. Do what you please."Matters this time were past the point where Selina felt at all that she wanted to cry. She went quietly back to her room and set about putting things in order with rather more faithfulness than usual, the while thinking and planning her morning so that she might go to her father as she said.It was past ten o'clock. By the time she dressed and started it would be near or quite eleven. At one o'clock, Tuttle Jones, his mother, Mrs. Sampson, his sister, and a bevy of young people were coming by for her in a tally-ho driven by Tuttle. Their destination was the jockey-club, where they would have lunch before the races, the fall trots opening to-day.Selina had never been to a clubhouse, and for knowledge of races had seen a derby once in company with her father and Culpepper. But she would have given all chances to come of ever seeing the one or the other, if she'd known how to get out of going to-day. Her soul was sick and also her spirit. Papa, haggard and broken! And Mamma turned on him with reproach, after giving up the fight!And yet this coaching-party was result of the discovery by Tuttle that she, Selina, never had been to so routine a thing as the race-course clubhouse, or to so perfunctory a piece of business as the trotting races. His manner concerning these sins of omission in her bringing-up was perfect, but he filled up the blanks in her all too meager experience as rapidly as possible after discovery.Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle had given her nephew's point of view on the social obligation to Selina one day when she had her out driving."Tuttle will endeavor to meet his God with a perfect manner and calmly. He'd feel he'd failed 'em both to show gaucherie or surprise. And Tuttle's devout."About eleven o'clock Selina showed herself at her mother's door again. She had on a summer silk in biscuit tones, one of Mamma's several extravagances for her that had worried her this summer and her leghorn hat with its wreath. And she was carrying Mamma's further extravagance for her, a silk dust-coat. Tuttle had a smart trap and a fast roadster, and throughout the summer had come around about an hour before sundown to take her for a spin out the avenue, or through town and out the country road following the banks of the river. Mamma said this made a coat for her imperative.Also, as she stood here in the door, she held in her hand a parasol, biscuit-colored too, with a rose lining. Mamma had noticed that everybody in traps or stanhopes, every lady that is, starting forth with the sun still an hour high, had a parasol. As Selina got these things together to-day, she could only hope they were paid for."Mamma, I'm starting down to see Papa now. I dressed so as to be ready for the races when they come by for me. It's off my mind and easier for methan to have to hurry when I get back. Mamma, I won't kiss you, nor you either, Auntie. It won't do for me to break down and cry."She went downstairs and out into the September midday glare. She would walk the two squares to the street-car line and there for the sake of time take a car. Otherwise even carfare might be an extravagance now.And then as she went along the hot street, Selina with a rush of despair and bitterness began to take stock.As an economic factor—she was indebted to Miss Emma McRanney for the phrase—where was she, Selina Wistar, after two years of effort?"Exactly where I started," she told herself still more bitterly, "listening to Mamma say there's no money to pay Aunt Viney."True, in June just past, she had taken the examinations over again, and this time obtained her teacher's certificate. And to what end? To learn that in lieu of any normal training for teachers in the public schools, she must supply as an assistant without pay for a year to achieve such training.She had answered some advertisements in Mamma's church paper, for private teaching in Southern families. The result had been to learn that French, drawing, music, and in one instance, needlework, were part of the requirements, for which board and one hundred dollars for the ten months was the largest of the offered remunerations. And this lastweek she had applied for a chance vacancy in a private school here at home. The polite refusal of her application lay at home now on her table. One line of the reply from the lady principal of the school stayed with her, "Experience in my estimation is the most essential qualification for teaching." It was the thing, Selina told herself, she was begging to be allowed to get!Here she reached the car-line and at the approach of the jogging car and its little mules got aboard, and, finding herself alone, resumed her communings. More, she got out a small bundle of letters from the pocket of her silk coat, letters she had taken over two nights ago to read to Maud who was just home from six weeks' travel with some cousins.It had been a long summer for Selina, unbroken except for Tuttle Jones, and since August, by the return of Culpepper. Amanthus had written to her once from Bar Harbor, she had the letter here now, apparently to say Mr. Cyril Doe was there visiting the embassy which had removed itself to that place for the summer. For having said this, Amanthus said nothing else. It was plain that Mr. Doe continued to impress her, and few things in this life so far had. She and her mother since then had left for London. Mr. Tate had written very happily to Culpepper, saying he and Amanthus would be married on his arrival in London.And Maud had been doing her first real traveling. As said, she was just home and, according toher mother, her first sight of the snow-topped mountains, plains and a few of the cities of her continent had not subdued her discontent.She had come across to see Selina only yesterday and to talk about her dissatisfaction. "What does Culpepper hear from Mr. Welling, Selina? Has he decided to settle in his part of the state and practice law under his father? I haven't heard from him. I didn't expect to. I told him I didn't believe I cared to correspond. And I didn't care to. If ever he and I take up our friendship again, his glee is going to be with me, and not at me. Selina, what is it I want? Is it the moon, do you suppose? Or only a path under the moon that goes to somewhere?"Selina here in the jogging street-car, remembering Maud's question, almost cried for her, its appeal was so great!Then the old Maud, in all the old vigor and energy, had spoken up again. "I'm going to New York and spend the winter as one of those chaperoned parlor-boarders at some school, if Papa will let me. I'll take up something, if it's only horseback riding," bitterly. "There's a fad for riding-schools right now. I really think maybe I'll look into elocution. Though some way that doesn't sound distingué, does it? Perhaps it had better be designing for carpets or wall-paper, I read about women doing these."So Maud, splendid, loyal, honest, restless Maud!Selina looked out the car-window and got her bearings. She had time in plenty yet and could resume her communings. Adele had been away since July at Cape May and to the mountains with her mother and grandmother. She would be home about the first of October. Her several letters to Selina had been listless and devoid of much hope."I don't quite see what I'm coming back to," she said in the last one here on Selina's lap "and can only hope Mamma and Grandmamma do see. Débutantes of the first and second rank when they lapse over to a second winter, I've noticed, form into euchre clubs that play in the daytime with each other, and take classes in the Saturday morning sewing-schools. What becomes of lapsed-over débutantes of the third or even as bad as the fourth rank, apparently I'm being taken back home to find out. I didn't tell you before I left that Mr. Cannon has been engaged all this time to a cousin up at his own home. He told me about it when he came to say good-bye. I thought I'd like you to know, and now we'll drop it."Selina took up the last of the letters. It was from Juliette and she wrote cheerfully in her crisp, spirited backhand.Both Granddad and Grandfather came around in their stands, after they found I'd actually done the thing, and agreed to put me through the four years of college. And Algy went to see them it seems and up and told them he purposed doing this himself! That, as he understands it, and unless he was laboring under a mistake, he was the person whose name I'd undertaken to bear. And he'sbeen sending me money right along while I'm here with my cousin making up my two conditions. But it's the money both Granddad and Grandfather have put in the bank for me I'm using and shall use. And so I can't understand all this talk from everybody at home of the shocking great deal I've taken from Algy in marrying him in this way. He and I, at any rate, understood it when we talked it over. My cousin asked me the other day what I meant to do about it when I got through college? Did I look on myself as Algy's wife, or did I not? I hadn't thought about this, and it's been worrying me considerably. Do you suppose he thinks that's the way of it? Do you know, Mamma never once spoke to me about the possibilities of my being anybody's wife in my life?Selina, glancing up, put her letters hastily together and thrust them in her pocket and rang the bell. She had reached the corner where she left the car, half a block from her father's office.CHAPTER FORTYThe street where Selina left the car was cool and dank between shabby brick stores and shabbier warehouses. It smelled of sugar and molasses and leather. The floor-space occupied by her father for fifteen years was in one of these buildings on the second floor.Coming to it she went up the worn stairs by which this second floor was reached from the street, and, opening the glass-sashed door at the head of the staircase, came in on the long floor-space occupied with boilers, pumps, portable mills, what not, most of them second-hand. She went back through the long aisle between these to the office in the rear, which was shut off by a glass partition and overlooked an alley where, as she remembered it, drays drawn by mules forever stood being loaded or unloaded with heavy freight.The door in this partition was open and through it she could see the interior of the office—two tall, shabby, sloping-topped desks, two tall stools one before either desk, two chairs, a stove and a strip of cocoa matting. That was the whole of it! That and her father and his general factotum, old Jerry,who was clerk, office boy, janitor, and, with some help from the outside for the lifting of machinery, porter. The whole of it, this, where her father for fifteen years had spent the larger part of his waking hours! And for the rest paid the bills Mamma made for the family, and played whist with a congenial group of his own sex once a fortnight! Husbands and fathers then did not always get a great deal out of it themselves!Selina had slowed her steps as she came to the open door. Within the office old Jerry was bringing out ledgers, she had a general idea you called 'em ledgers, or daybooks, she'd heard somewhere of daybooks too. And as he placed these on one of the sloping desks and shuffled out of the way, she saw her father leaning against the other desk and talking to, why, so it was, he was talking with Cousin Willoughby Tomlinson!They had not seen her yet, and something made her stop where she was outside the doorway.Perhaps it was the little hand wave of her father, which was quietly eloquent. "Thank you for coming to me, Willoughby. A little counseling with somebody of one's own family at a time like this is a relief."Somebody of his own family! She liked that! This dear, mistaken Papa! He was talking on. "Yes, it's the end of things here for me, I'm afraid. I've lost my only worth-while agencies. I daresay they're right about it. I'm fogy and they want ahustler to represent 'em for a change. The question is—and I want your counsel about it, Jerry's getting out the books for us—can I make it a wind-up in any possible way, or is it going to have to be an assignment?"Selina turned and hurried back through the long aisle between the oily machines. Her heart beat cruelly, but the rest of her, thoughts, feelings, body itself, was numb. She went down the worn stairway and came out into the dankness of the street.They had not seen her, her father and Cousin Willoughby. She was glad of that. What would have been the use? It would have disturbed them in their talk and upset her father, and she knew now what she'd come to ask without his having to tell her.It was early. She still had part of the time she had allowed for her talk with him. Certainly carfarewasto be considered. She'd walk home, walk and think.Think? Think of what? She knew! Think how if she had been a poor man'ssonwhere she was a poor man'sdaughter, that son would have been prepared and shaped by every condition and circumstance to take care of himself. A son long ago would have been at work.Just what thenisexpected of poor men's daughters by the world they live in and are to exist by?What?The answer came to her with staggering suddennessand illuminating clarity as she never had grasped it before. A truth is a truism and slips through the consciousness glibly until one discovers it for oneself. Another illuminating discovery! Then it is mighty and will prevail!Daughters are expected to solve their economic problems through marriage!Daughters have but the one business in life, which is to find husbands! Marriage as a solution for all her problems is a daughter's profession!And if she fail? If she find no economic salvation for herself through a husband?Rage, fury, shame, swept through Selina. The symbol of such failure stood piteously before her, Auntie! Auntie with a pittance doled out to her barely sufficient for her church dues and her few garments! Auntie stitching on fine muslin hands with no remuneration from any source for the perfection of those stitches, Auntie with all that magnificent endowment of perfect health and untiring energy that wasted itself so piteously in polishing brasses. Fury swept through Selina again, fury and resentment so hot they scorched and seared her. Say, for instance, that had Auntie been the man, and Papa the woman of the two of them?Selina hurried along, one block, two blocks, three blocks, not that time pressed but that misery and indignation drove.Then as she looked up and saw where she was, at the turn of a block where it touched on the courthouseneighborhood and the region of lawyers and their offices, she knew by prescience what was going to happen. Knew it with such certainty that her heart quickened and her breath caught even as a step came hurrying behind her, a cheerful voice as the steps drew nearer, spoke her name, and Culpepper, catching up with her, joined her."Our offices are in the second story back yonder. I saw you out the window as you went by."He took off his straw hat and wiped his forehead with one of those amazingly big and wonderful linen handkerchiefs Cousin Maria gloried in keeping him supplied with. In his vigor, his strength, his confidence, he was overwhelming. He towered above Selina. To surrender to masterfulness like his? To lose oneself through such dominance? Could she? And be at peace forever in the certainty of his care, and the knowledge the fight was his, not hers? It all were easy then if one could.Culpepper's blue eyes bold through those black lashes, but softened by solicitude right now, scanned her face, then looked relieved."You know then?"She nodded, pretty creature that she was, the wealth of her shining hair showing beneath her wreathed hat. "Andyouknow?""I was round with Cousin Robert at the office last night, going over the books and the chances with him."Here he waved a car. It was a belt line and went the long way round, but in its own good time would get them to their home neighborhood.He led her out to the track, put her on the car, and followed. "How'd you know?" he asked as he sat down by her. "Cousin Robert told me he wouldn't mention it to any of you at the house till matters were decided.""He ought to have told it at home from the start," she cried, and explained how she knew and they talked it and the situation at home over in their sorry details. Then she burst forth again, the more passionately that being here on the street-car, it must be restrainedly."Look at me, Culpepper? What am I? What am I fit for? What am I able to do as anything should be done? I've been given no way at all to earn my living. I've never been allowed to order a meal, or go to market to fit me even that way. I've never drawn a check, and I've never paid a bill. I'm past nineteen and at as pitiful a beginning as I was at sixteen."She swallowed, looking ahead, her eyes fixed absently on the only other passenger in the car at the moment. Her profile thus was to Culpepper and he loved it. Fair and clear-cut and fine, he had loved it in her when she was a child.She was seeing not the other passenger at all at whom she gazed so bitterly, poor man, but a grievance because of which she was passionately rebellious."You were made ready from the start, Culpepper; everybody concerned saw to ityouwere prepared. I'm hard about it. I'm resentful. I accuse—who or what is it Idoaccuse?" piteously. "Mamma? Papa? Conditions? The system? If there is any system for bringing up girls, and it isn'talljust haphazard! And Culpepper, at home they're all so helpless! Mamma and Auntie! And Papa's so sensitive and is going to grow pitiful under this second failure and the having to take, as I suppose he will, some little clerkship, somebody'll be charitable enough to give him. It's up to me. And I want it to be up to me. You must see that the whole measure of what I'll ever be depends on my seeing right now that itisup to me. And, Oh, what way is there for me to meet it?"He laid a hand on her arm and nodded abruptly toward the window. She followed his indicating nod and looked out. The car had turned into a residence street, and they were passing the house where Tuttle Jones made his home with his exceedingly well-to-do parents. Pompous and broad, and of comely stone was this home in its wide yard, its flower vases overflowing with bloom and color. But it was to something more pertinent than the Jones' house Culpepper with his nod referred.Tuttle himself and his tally-ho were just wheeling in at the curb, and the groom at the back was leaping down. And if the whole, horses, tandem, coach, Tuttle himself in his belted dust-coat, groombreeched and booted, were more than a bit spectacular, one could rest easy in the knowledge that it was because in this case it was eminently the correct thing to be spectacular. Tuttle was arrived here at home, Selina judged, to get his mother, preparatory to gathering up the remainder of his party, herself among these."Tuttle will be by for me by the time we reach home, Culpepper. He's horrified that I haven't had my share in social experience as included in races."The car jogged past, and as it came to the corner, the point nearest their own neighborhood, Culpepper rang the bell.As they reached the pavement he spoke. His eyes were narrowed and he did not look at her. For the first time in their lives he was approaching a subject to her with entire seriousness."I reckon we'll have to allow it was coincidence offered me Tuttle and his circus wagon just now. What I meant was, honey, that the world and the system, as you call it, would point to Tuttle and tell you you've done everything and even more, expected of you. Catch my meaning?"Did she? Her cheeks blazed. He was only corroborating what within the half-hour she had said for herself.Culpepper was going on, still avoiding all look at her. "And I want to say further, honey, that Tuttle's a great chap, Tut's all right. I gave in when he showed what was in him by appreciatingyou." His eyes swept around to her here with mock challenge. "How's that my lady, for magnanimity toward a flaunting rival?"She didn't pretend not to understand him. She was rising to honesty these days through a force within her which itself craved truth. Color, however, had surged to her face with a violence which the rose lining to the open parasol on her shoulder could not be held responsible for—a growing violence, which finally overcame her, and she stumbled.His hand quick and sure, righted her little gesture.She made a disclaiming with her head."The world and the system may be mistaken," she said hotly. And as she said it she now looked straight ahead, though her face was spirited.He checked their steps. Their own corner was in sight, a block straight ahead."So?" from this Culpepper, watching her. "So, honey? All the better then. It clears the decks. It seemed decenter somehow to include his claims. And now for mine. Everybody knows where I stand. What I want. You know. My mother for godspeed, when I came away in August, said, 'Go on down and take your job and marry Selina.' Will you do it, honey?"Her color was gone with the violence with which it came, leaving her white. A tremor went over her.Watching her as closely still, he went on. "What a fool time and fool place to ask it, where I can't pick you up and tell you a few things. Can't comfortyou, honey, the way we used to comfort your hurt fingers and feelings when you'd bring 'em to us when you were around five! Remember how I used to cure 'em, Selina?" coaxingly. "And ole Miss'll belong to us? She's a little more mine even than she's yours? What say now, honey, don't let's go teasing each other this way any longer?"Up the home street ahead of them Tuttle, his tally-ho a-blossom now with gay parasols, was wheeling round the far intersection and about to come toward them. A moment or so more, and as they themselves would arrive at Selina's squat house, he would be wheeling in at the curb before it."As you say, Culpepper, it's a foolish time to try to talk. But I must try, and quickly, before we get there, please."Her color was all gone so that even her pretty lips, a bit compressed to hide their trembling, were white. So white his hand went out to touch hers, hanging at her side, for reassurance.But hers clenched so that he could not grasp it. Blessed child! And yet so obviously now, woman, too, through the child."Let me talk, please, Culpepper. Thank you for wanting me and for telling me. Though I don't believe you've ever realized that I've resented the way you've taken me for granted, you and Cousin Maria, and Auntie, and, yes, even Papa. But that's not what I want to speak about. It's this. There's no power in heaven or earth right now couldmake me marry either you or Tuttle! If he asks me to-day, and I won't hold him off any longer, I'll say so to him. When I come to marrying, I see it perfectly clearly and of a sudden to-day, it's going to be beyond any imagining or shade of possibility that's it's because it's a solution for me! I'm finding myself a little bit these days. I'm going to prove what I've found now. When I come to marry, it's going to be because I choose to give up independence to do it. How I'll get the independence I'm sure I don't know now, but I will get it," piteously. Then, "Culpepper, Oh, Culpepper," beseechingly as she turned toward him, a cry as from one bereft and needing help, "don'tyou see?Can'tyou see? Put yourself whereIam, and understandforme!"They were crossing the home corner now. Tuttle and his glittering show were wheeling in at the curb before the ugly little house. The neighborhood surreptitiously was at its windows. The breeched and booted groom had leaped down.It was this Tuttle up on the box who wouldn't shame his God by meeting him with anything less than entire correctness. Selina would try not to fail this kindly Tuttle now."Coming," she called with pretty gayety to the company aloft as she came in speaking distance, with a lift and a flirt of her parasol before surrendering it to Culpepper for lowering.Then to Culpepper imploringly. "Speak to Mamma and Auntie for me and reassure them aboutPapa, won't you, Culpepper? I'll have no chance."The coach was stationary at the curb, and so by now were Selina and Culpepper. He was big and splendid; she was slim and fair. Greetings were pelting down on them, and Tuttle with an eye on his horseflesh had risen on the box."No," from Selina to Tuttle aloft, "don't get down. OrcanJehu on the box get down? Culpepper'll put me up. Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Sampson, Miss Lyle, Mr. Haven, you all up there know Mr. Buxton? I've never mounted a coach before, and I'm horribly afraid I'll perpetrate what a friend of my youth, when she sprained her ankle, called afaux pas. Do give me your hand, Culpepper, and put me up?"Blessed child!And did her hand, as he took it, close on his for the instant, beseechingly as it were? Those soft fingers of hers cling to his? Hold to his as though loath to leave them?He must have thought they did, for after he had put her up on the box to the place directed by Tuttle beside himself, pretty creature that she was, still tremulous but bravely gay with it to wring your heartstrings, this Culpepper made pretence of need for more care of her, and swinging up on the step to arrange her skirt from chance contact with any brake or such matter, whispered softly up in the vernacular he kept for her and ole Miss."Honey!""Everybody waved and Culpepper was left standing there."And the while a chorus was chanting from the back seats, "Listen to us, Selina! Listen, Selina!Haveyou heard about Amanthus? Turn around and listen to us!Haveyou heard about Amanthus?"And here Mrs. Jones, leaning forward, addressed herself to Culpepper down again on the curb. "Mr. Buxton I seem to remember that Mr. Tate is a friend of yours? Haveyouheard about Amanthus?"The chorus resumed itself, arising from Mrs. Sampson, Miss Lyle, and Mr. Haven behind Mrs. Jones."Go on.""Don't keep 'em waiting.""Tell 'em about Amanthus.""Amanthus," said Mrs. Jones, "was married at St. George's in London, yesterday, to Mr. Cyril Doe. A cable from Mrs. Harrison to her bank, which is Tuttle's bank, came to-day."Amanthus had lived up toherbusiness in life!The whip touched the leader, the coach wheeled, everybody waved, and Culpepper was left standing there.Auntie called to him from the door. She had seen him from the window and come down. He went in to her there on the doorstep and put his arm around her and kissed her."Ole Miss, what do you suppose, I've just been given to cherish most of everything in the world?""Are you in earnest, Culpepper, or teasing? I never know. I'm a bit unstrung, and so's Lavinia, over this trouble, whatever it is, hanging over Robert. What is it that's been given to you to cherish?"She spoke with concern."Don't you worry, ole Miss, it's mine for cherishing, not yours. You're no worry.Youbelong to another generation in daughters of Shiloh that did your dancing in your vineyard according to custom, and have nothing to reproachyourpast with. The daughters of Shiloh to-day are declining to dance, ma'am, and are plucking the grapes in the vineyard instead. I need your coddling and your comforting. A daughter of Shiloh, among the dancers and the grapes, has handed me for my cherishing fruit of her gathering called a point of view.""Whatever do you mean, Culpepper? I never know when you're in earnest, or not?""She thinkssheis, ole Miss, that fair young daughter of Shiloh. I don't know just what to think, myself!""Are you speaking of Selina, Culpepper?""Who else? Ole Miss, I love her so and I want her. Where'd she pick up this whim?"

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHTSelina, reaching home a bit before dinner, read and re-read her note from Mrs. Jones. The springs in Virginia! She felt she knew all that this meant, and knew, too, what it would mean to be the young guest of Mrs. Samuel Jones at her cottage at these springs!After dinner, for some reason she couldn't define, she took the note, not to her mother, but her father. He was alone downstairs with his paper. He looked worn and tired, even a bit broken and haggard. Standing by his chair while he read the letter, she slipped an arm about his shoulders, though again she could not have explained why. His free hand went up, sought her hand there on his shoulder and closed on it.He sat quite still after he had finished the reading, his eyes on the sheet of paper lowered to his knee. For a full minute he did not speak. Then:"Tuttle has made no secret of what he means, Selina. Let's be very honest about it. Are you ready then to accept this invitation at his mother's hands?""Papa!" piteously."Unless your own mind is quite made up, I don'tthink you can accept it. How about it? Do you know what you want?""Papa!" this time beseechingly."For a full minute he did not speak.""Think it over, little daughter, and then come back and tell me what you decide.""I have thought it over, Papa.""The world and the flesh and a very decent and reputable young fellow, Selina?""Papa, please don't!""Come around here to me, where I can look at you, Selina." And when she had come, and he had drawn her down on the arm of the chair, he took her face in his hand and studied it, the eyes above all. Then he stood up, drew her to him and kissed her."We'll decide you won't go, little daughter. Let us say it's a case where we'll give the doubt the benefit for a while yet.""Must I tell Mamma about the note, and about my answer to it, Papa?""Certainly. Why do you ask?""She's going to be put out. It's almost a pity she has to know. And, Papa, I'm worried about the money she's spending on clothes for me this summer! She's done it because she's pleased to have me going with Tuttle."Selina stood before the mirror in her room, dressing for a barge party up the river. It was the first one of the season and the program was always the same. The crowd met in couples at some agreed on starting-point near the street-car line. On this occasion Cousin Anna's front porch was to be that spot by permission. From here they went down in the car to the river, descended the steep levee to the boathouse, and getting started a moment or so before sunset, if they had luck, rowed up the river a dozen miles to a certain favored spot, ate supper and floating down after the moon was up, reached theboathouse in time for an hour's dancing before going home.With care, Selina told herself as she stood there at her mirror, one can wear a best white dress on such an affair and not get ittoodabby. She'd compromise by wearing a ribbon belt and not a sash. Culpepper didn't dance, didn't care for foolishness, was the way he put it, but was going. So were Preston Cannon and Mr. Welling. The rooms over the confectionery were given up, and the three were leaving for their homes in the state to-morrow. Mr. Tate had already gone, sailing from New York for Germany this very day.Tuttle Jones was not of the party, which consisted of Selina's world, a world that Tuttle didn't trouble with.He had been very nice over her declining his mother's invitation."I was afraid perhaps you wouldn't see your way to it," he said. "I'll only be there with my mother two weeks anyhow. We can put in a very decent time here together, at home."Selina, her dressing completed, caught up her jacket from the bed and went into her mother's room. Culpepper was downstairs waiting for her. "Mamma, will I do? It's the end of the old things, you know, a real breaking up, and I want to look nice.""I thought you were saving that dress to go with Tuttle to call on his cousins to-morrow night," fromMamma. "The older one would have done perfectly well. Yes, you took very nice.""You look more than nice," from Auntie emphatically. "You're looking your best, Selina. If you need the dress for to-morrow night, I'll press it for you."Cousin Anna's porch was gay with the assembled bevy of them. Mr. Welling was with Maud, Mr. Cannon with Adele, and Bliss—yes, poor foolish Bliss, for the last time and at his own behest—was with Amanthus. Then there were Tommy and Tod Bacon and their visiting girl cousins and Brent Wild and Sam Rand for extras. Cousin Anna came out on the porch and shook hands around and laughed at their nonsense and pressed ice-water upon them. Nobody wanted any but still that was a good deal from Cousin Anna in the way of hospitality.Amanthus spoke of her plans to Selina and Maud while they were waiting for Juliette and Algy to come. She was sweet and definite."Mamma and I are going on to Narragansett and then Bar Harbor, the day after to-morrow. I had a note from your Mr. Cyril Doe, Selina, the other day, I haven't seen you to tell you, written from Ottawa, and hewillbe in Bar Harbor like he said. Later in the summer Mamma and I go to England and Mr. Tate will meet us there, and we'll be married in London.""What'll you call him?" from Maud, which wasaltogether nasty of her. "You can't bring yourself to say Lemuel, can you?""Lemuel is a very good name," from Amanthus with dignity, "and besides his middle name is Worthington and we'll probably call him that."Algy and Juliette came hurrying up just as the rest of them, tired of waiting, were boarding the street car.Juliette across the car aisle, now they could see her, looked pale. She had on her last winter's scarlet coat over a last summer's old white dress and looked dabby, poor, little, dark-eyed gypsy. But when a girlwon'ttake the money her father offers her to buy any new summer clothes——She had studied too hard, they all knew that. And for nothing. The examinations were but two days off now, in Cincinnati. There had been a final scene and row at her house recently, when she demanded again of her father that she be allowed to go, and again was refused with an almost brutal outburst of temper."And he said I'm under age," Juliette told Selina and Maud the day after this, "and if I ran off and started as I intimated I'd do, he could bring me back."Juliette with Algy at her side was with the crowd as they left the car, and with baskets, wraps, and what not, went down the steep, rock-paved levee, to the river at its foot, rolling broad and serene, the evening ferryboats just starting on their pilgrimages,and a steamboat here and there laid up at its wharf, the red of the sun at the horizon line, turning their white paint to rosiness.And Juliette and Algy went aboard the boathouse with them, everybody again was sure of that. Though the men couldn't recall that Algy was at his locker when they were at their own, getting into boating togs, and the girls spending their time out on the guards looking at the sunset on the water could not remember Juliette being with them.One thing was sure. After the two barges were well started under the long strokes of the rowers, and as far on their way as the upper bridge, it was discovered that neither boat contained Juliette or Algy.A halt following this discovery and a bringing of the barges alongside each other brought a bit of testimony from Tod Bacon."I saw them in one of the sculls before we got the barges out of the boathouse. I reckon they've plans of their own."There was a good deal of grumbling over the absence of Algy when they landed for supper on the high, woody bank that overswept the river up and down in a mighty stretch of view. Algy always built the fire, and went to the nearest farmhouse for water, and fetched and carried generally.The girls were unpacking the baskets and Maud had produced a tablecloth."Here, give me the bucket and I'll get the water,"grumbled Culpepper, "but the rest of you fellows busy yourselves with the fire."It was wonderful always, floating back those twelve miles downstream by moonlight. And such moonlight as there was to-night! One wondered what Amanthus found to say to Bliss. Culpepper with his orange and black blazer over his boating togs was lolling back in the stern of their barge beside Selina, and she said as much to him.He answered good-humoredly, "It isn't Amanthus' business in life to say, as she's often told you. She won't try to say."Tod Bacon, that nice boy, and Sam Rand, had their mandolins. Their clever picking of the strings ting-ling-a-linged over the broad waters."Honey, I'm going home to-morrow," said Culpepper, laying hold of a bit of Selina's jacket as it lay unused on her lap and openly fondling it while his eyes sought her face in the moonlight. "You haven't let me talk to you yet? What are you going to do about it?"And here Culpepper's hand, his big, firm hand leaving the cloak he had used for a blind, found her hand.Culpepper took what he wanted of life and people! She had said so before! And resented it!She regained her hand. He didn't seem to hold it against her and went back to his fondling of the jacket. "What you going to do about it, honey?""Tell you good-bye and a nice summer," said Selina briskly, moving her jacket. "I don't want to hear you talk, as you call it, Culpepper.""Well, I'll be back," from this young gentleman, still without resentment. "My mother has entered me in the best law firm in your town; isn't she the first-class fellow? And I come down to start in August."Patently Juliette and Algy did have their own plans and as patently didn't care to discuss them. They were at the boat-club waiting when the others arrived, and it was plain they neither of them cared to talk. Juliette's white dress under the scarlet coat looked dabbier, and she was altogether pale.She danced a little with the rest of them at the start, Tod Bacon, blessed boy, at the piano, but after that sat by herself, tired, she said. But when Algy, after prowling in the lunch baskets, brought her a sandwich and a bottle with shrub in it, she obediently ate the one, and when he had found a glass and got ice from the janitor, drank the other.Algy, big, splendid dear, looked pale himself, and with his straight features so unwontedly grown-up and stern, even looked gaunt.Mr. Welling, romping rather than waltzing by with one of the Bacon cousins, called to Algy."'Oh, swiftly glides the bonnie scull!'Or did it, Algy?""Aw, I don't know what you mean," said Algy crossly. "Lemme alone, can't you, Welling?"The next morning they learned what the temporary disappearance of Juliette and Algy the night before meant. The Wistars were at breakfast when Maud came flying over and into the dining-room. In her blue gingham dress, her red-brown hair was glorious, but her eyes were big and her cheeks white.At sight of her, Selina in a fresh gingham herself, divined something amiss and rose to meet her. Maud in her blue dress, threw herself upon Selina in her pink one, and burst into tears. "Juliette went across the river last night when we missed her, and was married to Algy!"Selina clutched at Maud and they stayed each other. The exclamations of Mamma and Auntie, and the question or two from Papa, reached them, as it were, from far away.Then Maud recovered herself. She had a tale to unfold and must be at the business! "I was at my window dressing, up a bit earlier than usual to work on my German verses, at my bay window, Selina, that looks out on the Caldwells. And I saw Algy arrive and come round the side way, and whistle real softly under Juliette's window. And after a minute Juliette came out the side-door with her hat and jacket and her gloves on, carrying her satchel. And I called to 'em and hurried down and met 'em at the gate and they told me they were married last night. Algy had come round to take her and put her on the train for Cincinnati. He entered her by telegraph last night for the examinations as Juliette Caldwell Biggs. She isn't of age, you see, Mr. Wistar, and her father told her he'd stop her if she tried to go.""And whistled real softly under Juliette's window.""Judy!" from Selina, weeping anew. "That little, tiny, pretty, breakable Judy!""I've known little tiny, pretty people myself," from Papa with humor. "It doesn't always preclude determination.""Determination," retorted Mamma. "I don't know what you mean, Mr. Wistar. I call it self-will in Juliette that's outrageous.""Mamma!" from Selina."I haven't finished," from Maudie, wiping her eyes and looking up. "After she's taken her examination, she's going to her college cousin up in Ohio, to wait and see if she passes. But she'll pass, we all know Juliette. And from there she'll enter college next fall. Juliette's written letters to send back to her grandfathers to see if either of them will help her through her college course with money. And if they won't she'll let Algy lend her enough to get her through.""Algy!" from Mamma, scandalized, "doesn't she realize he's herhusband?""Algy put her throughcollege?" from Auntie bewildered. "Doesn't she understand she'smarried?"Maud looked startled. She seemed to be seeing it in this light for the first time herself. "I—I don't believe she does. I don't believe it's occurred to Juliette that way at all. But," brightening, "Algy won'texpect her to. He's sure to understand. He's always been that way; hasn't he, Selina?"Selina nodded in corroboration."Accommodating, you know," further elucidated Maud, "and—er—perfectly willing to be—well—an expedient.""Expedient!" from Mamma, "And you're speaking of the girl'shusband?""Glorious," from Papa. "We've often thought it about ourselves, we husbands, but it takes the younger generation to admit it.""I don't like this levity," from Auntie, "my head's all in a whirl and I don't understand," piteously. "Marriage is a solemn thing and carries heavy obligations. Hasn't she thought at all of what a very great deal she's taking for granted in this young man? In Algy?"Darling Auntie!"Selina," from her father, "take your auntie's cup out to Viney and get her some fresh coffee. I do believe she's honestly pale. Woman's being driven willy-nilly, to and fro, up and down, finding herself these days, don't you realize that, big Sis? What's a mere Algy or two in the final issue?""Marriage is a solemn thing and carries obligations," insisted Auntie still piteously. Then she rose for her to vast heights. "For a woman to marry for any end but the one, is like using the chalice of the holy sacrament as a basket to carry her own wares to market."

Selina, reaching home a bit before dinner, read and re-read her note from Mrs. Jones. The springs in Virginia! She felt she knew all that this meant, and knew, too, what it would mean to be the young guest of Mrs. Samuel Jones at her cottage at these springs!

After dinner, for some reason she couldn't define, she took the note, not to her mother, but her father. He was alone downstairs with his paper. He looked worn and tired, even a bit broken and haggard. Standing by his chair while he read the letter, she slipped an arm about his shoulders, though again she could not have explained why. His free hand went up, sought her hand there on his shoulder and closed on it.

He sat quite still after he had finished the reading, his eyes on the sheet of paper lowered to his knee. For a full minute he did not speak. Then:

"Tuttle has made no secret of what he means, Selina. Let's be very honest about it. Are you ready then to accept this invitation at his mother's hands?"

"Papa!" piteously.

"Unless your own mind is quite made up, I don'tthink you can accept it. How about it? Do you know what you want?"

"Papa!" this time beseechingly.

"For a full minute he did not speak."

"For a full minute he did not speak."

"For a full minute he did not speak."

"Think it over, little daughter, and then come back and tell me what you decide."

"I have thought it over, Papa."

"The world and the flesh and a very decent and reputable young fellow, Selina?"

"Papa, please don't!"

"Come around here to me, where I can look at you, Selina." And when she had come, and he had drawn her down on the arm of the chair, he took her face in his hand and studied it, the eyes above all. Then he stood up, drew her to him and kissed her.

"We'll decide you won't go, little daughter. Let us say it's a case where we'll give the doubt the benefit for a while yet."

"Must I tell Mamma about the note, and about my answer to it, Papa?"

"Certainly. Why do you ask?"

"She's going to be put out. It's almost a pity she has to know. And, Papa, I'm worried about the money she's spending on clothes for me this summer! She's done it because she's pleased to have me going with Tuttle."

Selina stood before the mirror in her room, dressing for a barge party up the river. It was the first one of the season and the program was always the same. The crowd met in couples at some agreed on starting-point near the street-car line. On this occasion Cousin Anna's front porch was to be that spot by permission. From here they went down in the car to the river, descended the steep levee to the boathouse, and getting started a moment or so before sunset, if they had luck, rowed up the river a dozen miles to a certain favored spot, ate supper and floating down after the moon was up, reached theboathouse in time for an hour's dancing before going home.

With care, Selina told herself as she stood there at her mirror, one can wear a best white dress on such an affair and not get ittoodabby. She'd compromise by wearing a ribbon belt and not a sash. Culpepper didn't dance, didn't care for foolishness, was the way he put it, but was going. So were Preston Cannon and Mr. Welling. The rooms over the confectionery were given up, and the three were leaving for their homes in the state to-morrow. Mr. Tate had already gone, sailing from New York for Germany this very day.

Tuttle Jones was not of the party, which consisted of Selina's world, a world that Tuttle didn't trouble with.

He had been very nice over her declining his mother's invitation.

"I was afraid perhaps you wouldn't see your way to it," he said. "I'll only be there with my mother two weeks anyhow. We can put in a very decent time here together, at home."

Selina, her dressing completed, caught up her jacket from the bed and went into her mother's room. Culpepper was downstairs waiting for her. "Mamma, will I do? It's the end of the old things, you know, a real breaking up, and I want to look nice."

"I thought you were saving that dress to go with Tuttle to call on his cousins to-morrow night," fromMamma. "The older one would have done perfectly well. Yes, you took very nice."

"You look more than nice," from Auntie emphatically. "You're looking your best, Selina. If you need the dress for to-morrow night, I'll press it for you."

Cousin Anna's porch was gay with the assembled bevy of them. Mr. Welling was with Maud, Mr. Cannon with Adele, and Bliss—yes, poor foolish Bliss, for the last time and at his own behest—was with Amanthus. Then there were Tommy and Tod Bacon and their visiting girl cousins and Brent Wild and Sam Rand for extras. Cousin Anna came out on the porch and shook hands around and laughed at their nonsense and pressed ice-water upon them. Nobody wanted any but still that was a good deal from Cousin Anna in the way of hospitality.

Amanthus spoke of her plans to Selina and Maud while they were waiting for Juliette and Algy to come. She was sweet and definite.

"Mamma and I are going on to Narragansett and then Bar Harbor, the day after to-morrow. I had a note from your Mr. Cyril Doe, Selina, the other day, I haven't seen you to tell you, written from Ottawa, and hewillbe in Bar Harbor like he said. Later in the summer Mamma and I go to England and Mr. Tate will meet us there, and we'll be married in London."

"What'll you call him?" from Maud, which wasaltogether nasty of her. "You can't bring yourself to say Lemuel, can you?"

"Lemuel is a very good name," from Amanthus with dignity, "and besides his middle name is Worthington and we'll probably call him that."

Algy and Juliette came hurrying up just as the rest of them, tired of waiting, were boarding the street car.

Juliette across the car aisle, now they could see her, looked pale. She had on her last winter's scarlet coat over a last summer's old white dress and looked dabby, poor, little, dark-eyed gypsy. But when a girlwon'ttake the money her father offers her to buy any new summer clothes——

She had studied too hard, they all knew that. And for nothing. The examinations were but two days off now, in Cincinnati. There had been a final scene and row at her house recently, when she demanded again of her father that she be allowed to go, and again was refused with an almost brutal outburst of temper.

"And he said I'm under age," Juliette told Selina and Maud the day after this, "and if I ran off and started as I intimated I'd do, he could bring me back."

Juliette with Algy at her side was with the crowd as they left the car, and with baskets, wraps, and what not, went down the steep, rock-paved levee, to the river at its foot, rolling broad and serene, the evening ferryboats just starting on their pilgrimages,and a steamboat here and there laid up at its wharf, the red of the sun at the horizon line, turning their white paint to rosiness.

And Juliette and Algy went aboard the boathouse with them, everybody again was sure of that. Though the men couldn't recall that Algy was at his locker when they were at their own, getting into boating togs, and the girls spending their time out on the guards looking at the sunset on the water could not remember Juliette being with them.

One thing was sure. After the two barges were well started under the long strokes of the rowers, and as far on their way as the upper bridge, it was discovered that neither boat contained Juliette or Algy.

A halt following this discovery and a bringing of the barges alongside each other brought a bit of testimony from Tod Bacon.

"I saw them in one of the sculls before we got the barges out of the boathouse. I reckon they've plans of their own."

There was a good deal of grumbling over the absence of Algy when they landed for supper on the high, woody bank that overswept the river up and down in a mighty stretch of view. Algy always built the fire, and went to the nearest farmhouse for water, and fetched and carried generally.

The girls were unpacking the baskets and Maud had produced a tablecloth.

"Here, give me the bucket and I'll get the water,"grumbled Culpepper, "but the rest of you fellows busy yourselves with the fire."

It was wonderful always, floating back those twelve miles downstream by moonlight. And such moonlight as there was to-night! One wondered what Amanthus found to say to Bliss. Culpepper with his orange and black blazer over his boating togs was lolling back in the stern of their barge beside Selina, and she said as much to him.

He answered good-humoredly, "It isn't Amanthus' business in life to say, as she's often told you. She won't try to say."

Tod Bacon, that nice boy, and Sam Rand, had their mandolins. Their clever picking of the strings ting-ling-a-linged over the broad waters.

"Honey, I'm going home to-morrow," said Culpepper, laying hold of a bit of Selina's jacket as it lay unused on her lap and openly fondling it while his eyes sought her face in the moonlight. "You haven't let me talk to you yet? What are you going to do about it?"

And here Culpepper's hand, his big, firm hand leaving the cloak he had used for a blind, found her hand.

Culpepper took what he wanted of life and people! She had said so before! And resented it!

She regained her hand. He didn't seem to hold it against her and went back to his fondling of the jacket. "What you going to do about it, honey?"

"Tell you good-bye and a nice summer," said Selina briskly, moving her jacket. "I don't want to hear you talk, as you call it, Culpepper."

"Well, I'll be back," from this young gentleman, still without resentment. "My mother has entered me in the best law firm in your town; isn't she the first-class fellow? And I come down to start in August."

Patently Juliette and Algy did have their own plans and as patently didn't care to discuss them. They were at the boat-club waiting when the others arrived, and it was plain they neither of them cared to talk. Juliette's white dress under the scarlet coat looked dabbier, and she was altogether pale.

She danced a little with the rest of them at the start, Tod Bacon, blessed boy, at the piano, but after that sat by herself, tired, she said. But when Algy, after prowling in the lunch baskets, brought her a sandwich and a bottle with shrub in it, she obediently ate the one, and when he had found a glass and got ice from the janitor, drank the other.

Algy, big, splendid dear, looked pale himself, and with his straight features so unwontedly grown-up and stern, even looked gaunt.

Mr. Welling, romping rather than waltzing by with one of the Bacon cousins, called to Algy.

"'Oh, swiftly glides the bonnie scull!'Or did it, Algy?"

"Aw, I don't know what you mean," said Algy crossly. "Lemme alone, can't you, Welling?"

The next morning they learned what the temporary disappearance of Juliette and Algy the night before meant. The Wistars were at breakfast when Maud came flying over and into the dining-room. In her blue gingham dress, her red-brown hair was glorious, but her eyes were big and her cheeks white.

At sight of her, Selina in a fresh gingham herself, divined something amiss and rose to meet her. Maud in her blue dress, threw herself upon Selina in her pink one, and burst into tears. "Juliette went across the river last night when we missed her, and was married to Algy!"

Selina clutched at Maud and they stayed each other. The exclamations of Mamma and Auntie, and the question or two from Papa, reached them, as it were, from far away.

Then Maud recovered herself. She had a tale to unfold and must be at the business! "I was at my window dressing, up a bit earlier than usual to work on my German verses, at my bay window, Selina, that looks out on the Caldwells. And I saw Algy arrive and come round the side way, and whistle real softly under Juliette's window. And after a minute Juliette came out the side-door with her hat and jacket and her gloves on, carrying her satchel. And I called to 'em and hurried down and met 'em at the gate and they told me they were married last night. Algy had come round to take her and put her on the train for Cincinnati. He entered her by telegraph last night for the examinations as Juliette Caldwell Biggs. She isn't of age, you see, Mr. Wistar, and her father told her he'd stop her if she tried to go."

"And whistled real softly under Juliette's window."

"And whistled real softly under Juliette's window."

"And whistled real softly under Juliette's window."

"Judy!" from Selina, weeping anew. "That little, tiny, pretty, breakable Judy!"

"I've known little tiny, pretty people myself," from Papa with humor. "It doesn't always preclude determination."

"Determination," retorted Mamma. "I don't know what you mean, Mr. Wistar. I call it self-will in Juliette that's outrageous."

"Mamma!" from Selina.

"I haven't finished," from Maudie, wiping her eyes and looking up. "After she's taken her examination, she's going to her college cousin up in Ohio, to wait and see if she passes. But she'll pass, we all know Juliette. And from there she'll enter college next fall. Juliette's written letters to send back to her grandfathers to see if either of them will help her through her college course with money. And if they won't she'll let Algy lend her enough to get her through."

"Algy!" from Mamma, scandalized, "doesn't she realize he's herhusband?"

"Algy put her throughcollege?" from Auntie bewildered. "Doesn't she understand she'smarried?"

Maud looked startled. She seemed to be seeing it in this light for the first time herself. "I—I don't believe she does. I don't believe it's occurred to Juliette that way at all. But," brightening, "Algy won'texpect her to. He's sure to understand. He's always been that way; hasn't he, Selina?"

Selina nodded in corroboration.

"Accommodating, you know," further elucidated Maud, "and—er—perfectly willing to be—well—an expedient."

"Expedient!" from Mamma, "And you're speaking of the girl'shusband?"

"Glorious," from Papa. "We've often thought it about ourselves, we husbands, but it takes the younger generation to admit it."

"I don't like this levity," from Auntie, "my head's all in a whirl and I don't understand," piteously. "Marriage is a solemn thing and carries heavy obligations. Hasn't she thought at all of what a very great deal she's taking for granted in this young man? In Algy?"

Darling Auntie!

"Selina," from her father, "take your auntie's cup out to Viney and get her some fresh coffee. I do believe she's honestly pale. Woman's being driven willy-nilly, to and fro, up and down, finding herself these days, don't you realize that, big Sis? What's a mere Algy or two in the final issue?"

"Marriage is a solemn thing and carries obligations," insisted Auntie still piteously. Then she rose for her to vast heights. "For a woman to marry for any end but the one, is like using the chalice of the holy sacrament as a basket to carry her own wares to market."

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINEMamma, who so rarely betrayed herself by an open admission of her real state of mind, sat by the window crying softly. Auntie, at her window, moved heavily as through the act to expend some of her ponderous energy."I've always felt theremustbe something wrong with our way of managing, Lavinia? Do you suppose it would have worked better if we'd ever had aplanto fit our expenses to, or made Robert agree as to justwhatwe might have to go on?""If you think you could have done it better than I have, Ann Eliza—" from Mamma, a bright spot on either cheek as she raised her head and faced her sister-in-law. Little lady, only forty-two now, and meant by heaven to be pretty if instead she had not to be so anxiously perturbed!"How badisit, Lavinia?" from Auntie.A light footstep sounded along the hall and Selina paused in her mother's doorway. It was September and, after the long summer, pleasures and activities were starting up. She had been to the theater with Tuttle last night, and this morning was allowed to have her sleep out. Here athalf-past nine she was just coming up from her breakfast!This Selina standing there in the doorway, looking from her mother to her aunt, was nineteen now and past, but beneath something of gravity now in the face under the very lovely hair, she still was sweet and loving and anxious."How badisit, Lavinia?" Auntie was saying.Mamma looking across to the door saw her child. "Come in, Selina. You've heard as much, and you may as well hear the rest. There's no money for Viney. Last month's bills all lapsed over because Robert told me I'd have to wait. And now they've come in with this month's bills. The iceman's been here three times."Here Mamma's hands dropped into her lap with a gesture that carried dismay to the others. It was the gesture of one who abjures any further responsibility, of one who steps aside. No defence was left in her, no air of anxious justification. She would state the whole, her manner seemed to say, without reserve and without mincing, and let somebody else face the issue.The face of this older Selina, standing there in the doorway, had gathered something of decision, too, and something of the inner steady flame that comes with this gain in character."How has Papa explained it, Mamma? What did he say when he told you that you would have to wait?""He didn't explain and I didn't like to ask. It's been clear he was worried all along through the summer.""Mamma, I think you should have asked. Or I think Papa should have told you, so you wouldn't have to ask."Mamma made no defence, showed no disposition to reprove, or yet to resent. She searched around for her pocket-handkerchief again, found it, and resumed her crying."You said something about it to Robert at the breakfast table this morning, Lavinia?" reminded Auntie.Mamma conceded this from behind the handkerchief at her eyes."You said, 'Robert, you didn't get in from the office till one o'clock last night, and you didn't come up to bed till past three? Whatisthe matter? And this thing of no money again for the bills? Whatdoesit all mean?'"Mamma lifted her head again. Her spirit had returned. "And he said," she spoke indignantly, "'For God's sake, Lavinia, when I'm trying to spare you as long as I can, don't come at me now with questions.' I didn't ask him to spare me!" with spirit. "I'm tired of pretending his way of keeping me in the dark's right. I've been pretending so when I didn't feel so for twenty years. I'm going to say it out now. And I didn't ask him to spare me. I asked him to tell me.""Mamma, little Mamma!" from Selina, hurrying across the room to her side."Of course I wasn't competent at first, and proved I couldn't be trusted with money and the rest of it. I never had been trusted with anything. My mother bought my clothes and my father took the bills from her and paid them. But it doesn't go to prove I couldn't have been made trustworthy if Robert had been patient and showed me a little and trusted me till I could.""Lavinia," from Auntie piteously, "I've misjudged you. You wouldn't criticize Robert and you wouldn't allow anyone else to criticize him before you?"Mamma had resumed her soft crying and Selina was on her knees by her, trying to comfort her."Have you any idea whatisthe matter, Mamma? The matter with Papa's affairs, I mean?""He's been worried all summer, and you've seen for yourself how haggard he's come to be. There was some talk of his losing his two best agencies last spring. The rest of the business doesn't amount to much, and I'm afraid it must be that he's lost them.""Mamma, don't you think we've a right to know? I'll go down to him at his office now, if you're willing I may, and ask him? I'll dress and go down to him, if you'll let me?""I'm through," said her mother, "I feel that I've failed. The heart's gone out of me. Do what you please."Matters this time were past the point where Selina felt at all that she wanted to cry. She went quietly back to her room and set about putting things in order with rather more faithfulness than usual, the while thinking and planning her morning so that she might go to her father as she said.It was past ten o'clock. By the time she dressed and started it would be near or quite eleven. At one o'clock, Tuttle Jones, his mother, Mrs. Sampson, his sister, and a bevy of young people were coming by for her in a tally-ho driven by Tuttle. Their destination was the jockey-club, where they would have lunch before the races, the fall trots opening to-day.Selina had never been to a clubhouse, and for knowledge of races had seen a derby once in company with her father and Culpepper. But she would have given all chances to come of ever seeing the one or the other, if she'd known how to get out of going to-day. Her soul was sick and also her spirit. Papa, haggard and broken! And Mamma turned on him with reproach, after giving up the fight!And yet this coaching-party was result of the discovery by Tuttle that she, Selina, never had been to so routine a thing as the race-course clubhouse, or to so perfunctory a piece of business as the trotting races. His manner concerning these sins of omission in her bringing-up was perfect, but he filled up the blanks in her all too meager experience as rapidly as possible after discovery.Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle had given her nephew's point of view on the social obligation to Selina one day when she had her out driving."Tuttle will endeavor to meet his God with a perfect manner and calmly. He'd feel he'd failed 'em both to show gaucherie or surprise. And Tuttle's devout."About eleven o'clock Selina showed herself at her mother's door again. She had on a summer silk in biscuit tones, one of Mamma's several extravagances for her that had worried her this summer and her leghorn hat with its wreath. And she was carrying Mamma's further extravagance for her, a silk dust-coat. Tuttle had a smart trap and a fast roadster, and throughout the summer had come around about an hour before sundown to take her for a spin out the avenue, or through town and out the country road following the banks of the river. Mamma said this made a coat for her imperative.Also, as she stood here in the door, she held in her hand a parasol, biscuit-colored too, with a rose lining. Mamma had noticed that everybody in traps or stanhopes, every lady that is, starting forth with the sun still an hour high, had a parasol. As Selina got these things together to-day, she could only hope they were paid for."Mamma, I'm starting down to see Papa now. I dressed so as to be ready for the races when they come by for me. It's off my mind and easier for methan to have to hurry when I get back. Mamma, I won't kiss you, nor you either, Auntie. It won't do for me to break down and cry."She went downstairs and out into the September midday glare. She would walk the two squares to the street-car line and there for the sake of time take a car. Otherwise even carfare might be an extravagance now.And then as she went along the hot street, Selina with a rush of despair and bitterness began to take stock.As an economic factor—she was indebted to Miss Emma McRanney for the phrase—where was she, Selina Wistar, after two years of effort?"Exactly where I started," she told herself still more bitterly, "listening to Mamma say there's no money to pay Aunt Viney."True, in June just past, she had taken the examinations over again, and this time obtained her teacher's certificate. And to what end? To learn that in lieu of any normal training for teachers in the public schools, she must supply as an assistant without pay for a year to achieve such training.She had answered some advertisements in Mamma's church paper, for private teaching in Southern families. The result had been to learn that French, drawing, music, and in one instance, needlework, were part of the requirements, for which board and one hundred dollars for the ten months was the largest of the offered remunerations. And this lastweek she had applied for a chance vacancy in a private school here at home. The polite refusal of her application lay at home now on her table. One line of the reply from the lady principal of the school stayed with her, "Experience in my estimation is the most essential qualification for teaching." It was the thing, Selina told herself, she was begging to be allowed to get!Here she reached the car-line and at the approach of the jogging car and its little mules got aboard, and, finding herself alone, resumed her communings. More, she got out a small bundle of letters from the pocket of her silk coat, letters she had taken over two nights ago to read to Maud who was just home from six weeks' travel with some cousins.It had been a long summer for Selina, unbroken except for Tuttle Jones, and since August, by the return of Culpepper. Amanthus had written to her once from Bar Harbor, she had the letter here now, apparently to say Mr. Cyril Doe was there visiting the embassy which had removed itself to that place for the summer. For having said this, Amanthus said nothing else. It was plain that Mr. Doe continued to impress her, and few things in this life so far had. She and her mother since then had left for London. Mr. Tate had written very happily to Culpepper, saying he and Amanthus would be married on his arrival in London.And Maud had been doing her first real traveling. As said, she was just home and, according toher mother, her first sight of the snow-topped mountains, plains and a few of the cities of her continent had not subdued her discontent.She had come across to see Selina only yesterday and to talk about her dissatisfaction. "What does Culpepper hear from Mr. Welling, Selina? Has he decided to settle in his part of the state and practice law under his father? I haven't heard from him. I didn't expect to. I told him I didn't believe I cared to correspond. And I didn't care to. If ever he and I take up our friendship again, his glee is going to be with me, and not at me. Selina, what is it I want? Is it the moon, do you suppose? Or only a path under the moon that goes to somewhere?"Selina here in the jogging street-car, remembering Maud's question, almost cried for her, its appeal was so great!Then the old Maud, in all the old vigor and energy, had spoken up again. "I'm going to New York and spend the winter as one of those chaperoned parlor-boarders at some school, if Papa will let me. I'll take up something, if it's only horseback riding," bitterly. "There's a fad for riding-schools right now. I really think maybe I'll look into elocution. Though some way that doesn't sound distingué, does it? Perhaps it had better be designing for carpets or wall-paper, I read about women doing these."So Maud, splendid, loyal, honest, restless Maud!Selina looked out the car-window and got her bearings. She had time in plenty yet and could resume her communings. Adele had been away since July at Cape May and to the mountains with her mother and grandmother. She would be home about the first of October. Her several letters to Selina had been listless and devoid of much hope."I don't quite see what I'm coming back to," she said in the last one here on Selina's lap "and can only hope Mamma and Grandmamma do see. Débutantes of the first and second rank when they lapse over to a second winter, I've noticed, form into euchre clubs that play in the daytime with each other, and take classes in the Saturday morning sewing-schools. What becomes of lapsed-over débutantes of the third or even as bad as the fourth rank, apparently I'm being taken back home to find out. I didn't tell you before I left that Mr. Cannon has been engaged all this time to a cousin up at his own home. He told me about it when he came to say good-bye. I thought I'd like you to know, and now we'll drop it."Selina took up the last of the letters. It was from Juliette and she wrote cheerfully in her crisp, spirited backhand.Both Granddad and Grandfather came around in their stands, after they found I'd actually done the thing, and agreed to put me through the four years of college. And Algy went to see them it seems and up and told them he purposed doing this himself! That, as he understands it, and unless he was laboring under a mistake, he was the person whose name I'd undertaken to bear. And he'sbeen sending me money right along while I'm here with my cousin making up my two conditions. But it's the money both Granddad and Grandfather have put in the bank for me I'm using and shall use. And so I can't understand all this talk from everybody at home of the shocking great deal I've taken from Algy in marrying him in this way. He and I, at any rate, understood it when we talked it over. My cousin asked me the other day what I meant to do about it when I got through college? Did I look on myself as Algy's wife, or did I not? I hadn't thought about this, and it's been worrying me considerably. Do you suppose he thinks that's the way of it? Do you know, Mamma never once spoke to me about the possibilities of my being anybody's wife in my life?Selina, glancing up, put her letters hastily together and thrust them in her pocket and rang the bell. She had reached the corner where she left the car, half a block from her father's office.

Mamma, who so rarely betrayed herself by an open admission of her real state of mind, sat by the window crying softly. Auntie, at her window, moved heavily as through the act to expend some of her ponderous energy.

"I've always felt theremustbe something wrong with our way of managing, Lavinia? Do you suppose it would have worked better if we'd ever had aplanto fit our expenses to, or made Robert agree as to justwhatwe might have to go on?"

"If you think you could have done it better than I have, Ann Eliza—" from Mamma, a bright spot on either cheek as she raised her head and faced her sister-in-law. Little lady, only forty-two now, and meant by heaven to be pretty if instead she had not to be so anxiously perturbed!

"How badisit, Lavinia?" from Auntie.

A light footstep sounded along the hall and Selina paused in her mother's doorway. It was September and, after the long summer, pleasures and activities were starting up. She had been to the theater with Tuttle last night, and this morning was allowed to have her sleep out. Here athalf-past nine she was just coming up from her breakfast!

This Selina standing there in the doorway, looking from her mother to her aunt, was nineteen now and past, but beneath something of gravity now in the face under the very lovely hair, she still was sweet and loving and anxious.

"How badisit, Lavinia?" Auntie was saying.

Mamma looking across to the door saw her child. "Come in, Selina. You've heard as much, and you may as well hear the rest. There's no money for Viney. Last month's bills all lapsed over because Robert told me I'd have to wait. And now they've come in with this month's bills. The iceman's been here three times."

Here Mamma's hands dropped into her lap with a gesture that carried dismay to the others. It was the gesture of one who abjures any further responsibility, of one who steps aside. No defence was left in her, no air of anxious justification. She would state the whole, her manner seemed to say, without reserve and without mincing, and let somebody else face the issue.

The face of this older Selina, standing there in the doorway, had gathered something of decision, too, and something of the inner steady flame that comes with this gain in character.

"How has Papa explained it, Mamma? What did he say when he told you that you would have to wait?"

"He didn't explain and I didn't like to ask. It's been clear he was worried all along through the summer."

"Mamma, I think you should have asked. Or I think Papa should have told you, so you wouldn't have to ask."

Mamma made no defence, showed no disposition to reprove, or yet to resent. She searched around for her pocket-handkerchief again, found it, and resumed her crying.

"You said something about it to Robert at the breakfast table this morning, Lavinia?" reminded Auntie.

Mamma conceded this from behind the handkerchief at her eyes.

"You said, 'Robert, you didn't get in from the office till one o'clock last night, and you didn't come up to bed till past three? Whatisthe matter? And this thing of no money again for the bills? Whatdoesit all mean?'"

Mamma lifted her head again. Her spirit had returned. "And he said," she spoke indignantly, "'For God's sake, Lavinia, when I'm trying to spare you as long as I can, don't come at me now with questions.' I didn't ask him to spare me!" with spirit. "I'm tired of pretending his way of keeping me in the dark's right. I've been pretending so when I didn't feel so for twenty years. I'm going to say it out now. And I didn't ask him to spare me. I asked him to tell me."

"Mamma, little Mamma!" from Selina, hurrying across the room to her side.

"Of course I wasn't competent at first, and proved I couldn't be trusted with money and the rest of it. I never had been trusted with anything. My mother bought my clothes and my father took the bills from her and paid them. But it doesn't go to prove I couldn't have been made trustworthy if Robert had been patient and showed me a little and trusted me till I could."

"Lavinia," from Auntie piteously, "I've misjudged you. You wouldn't criticize Robert and you wouldn't allow anyone else to criticize him before you?"

Mamma had resumed her soft crying and Selina was on her knees by her, trying to comfort her.

"Have you any idea whatisthe matter, Mamma? The matter with Papa's affairs, I mean?"

"He's been worried all summer, and you've seen for yourself how haggard he's come to be. There was some talk of his losing his two best agencies last spring. The rest of the business doesn't amount to much, and I'm afraid it must be that he's lost them."

"Mamma, don't you think we've a right to know? I'll go down to him at his office now, if you're willing I may, and ask him? I'll dress and go down to him, if you'll let me?"

"I'm through," said her mother, "I feel that I've failed. The heart's gone out of me. Do what you please."

Matters this time were past the point where Selina felt at all that she wanted to cry. She went quietly back to her room and set about putting things in order with rather more faithfulness than usual, the while thinking and planning her morning so that she might go to her father as she said.

It was past ten o'clock. By the time she dressed and started it would be near or quite eleven. At one o'clock, Tuttle Jones, his mother, Mrs. Sampson, his sister, and a bevy of young people were coming by for her in a tally-ho driven by Tuttle. Their destination was the jockey-club, where they would have lunch before the races, the fall trots opening to-day.

Selina had never been to a clubhouse, and for knowledge of races had seen a derby once in company with her father and Culpepper. But she would have given all chances to come of ever seeing the one or the other, if she'd known how to get out of going to-day. Her soul was sick and also her spirit. Papa, haggard and broken! And Mamma turned on him with reproach, after giving up the fight!

And yet this coaching-party was result of the discovery by Tuttle that she, Selina, never had been to so routine a thing as the race-course clubhouse, or to so perfunctory a piece of business as the trotting races. His manner concerning these sins of omission in her bringing-up was perfect, but he filled up the blanks in her all too meager experience as rapidly as possible after discovery.

Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle had given her nephew's point of view on the social obligation to Selina one day when she had her out driving.

"Tuttle will endeavor to meet his God with a perfect manner and calmly. He'd feel he'd failed 'em both to show gaucherie or surprise. And Tuttle's devout."

About eleven o'clock Selina showed herself at her mother's door again. She had on a summer silk in biscuit tones, one of Mamma's several extravagances for her that had worried her this summer and her leghorn hat with its wreath. And she was carrying Mamma's further extravagance for her, a silk dust-coat. Tuttle had a smart trap and a fast roadster, and throughout the summer had come around about an hour before sundown to take her for a spin out the avenue, or through town and out the country road following the banks of the river. Mamma said this made a coat for her imperative.

Also, as she stood here in the door, she held in her hand a parasol, biscuit-colored too, with a rose lining. Mamma had noticed that everybody in traps or stanhopes, every lady that is, starting forth with the sun still an hour high, had a parasol. As Selina got these things together to-day, she could only hope they were paid for.

"Mamma, I'm starting down to see Papa now. I dressed so as to be ready for the races when they come by for me. It's off my mind and easier for methan to have to hurry when I get back. Mamma, I won't kiss you, nor you either, Auntie. It won't do for me to break down and cry."

She went downstairs and out into the September midday glare. She would walk the two squares to the street-car line and there for the sake of time take a car. Otherwise even carfare might be an extravagance now.

And then as she went along the hot street, Selina with a rush of despair and bitterness began to take stock.

As an economic factor—she was indebted to Miss Emma McRanney for the phrase—where was she, Selina Wistar, after two years of effort?

"Exactly where I started," she told herself still more bitterly, "listening to Mamma say there's no money to pay Aunt Viney."

True, in June just past, she had taken the examinations over again, and this time obtained her teacher's certificate. And to what end? To learn that in lieu of any normal training for teachers in the public schools, she must supply as an assistant without pay for a year to achieve such training.

She had answered some advertisements in Mamma's church paper, for private teaching in Southern families. The result had been to learn that French, drawing, music, and in one instance, needlework, were part of the requirements, for which board and one hundred dollars for the ten months was the largest of the offered remunerations. And this lastweek she had applied for a chance vacancy in a private school here at home. The polite refusal of her application lay at home now on her table. One line of the reply from the lady principal of the school stayed with her, "Experience in my estimation is the most essential qualification for teaching." It was the thing, Selina told herself, she was begging to be allowed to get!

Here she reached the car-line and at the approach of the jogging car and its little mules got aboard, and, finding herself alone, resumed her communings. More, she got out a small bundle of letters from the pocket of her silk coat, letters she had taken over two nights ago to read to Maud who was just home from six weeks' travel with some cousins.

It had been a long summer for Selina, unbroken except for Tuttle Jones, and since August, by the return of Culpepper. Amanthus had written to her once from Bar Harbor, she had the letter here now, apparently to say Mr. Cyril Doe was there visiting the embassy which had removed itself to that place for the summer. For having said this, Amanthus said nothing else. It was plain that Mr. Doe continued to impress her, and few things in this life so far had. She and her mother since then had left for London. Mr. Tate had written very happily to Culpepper, saying he and Amanthus would be married on his arrival in London.

And Maud had been doing her first real traveling. As said, she was just home and, according toher mother, her first sight of the snow-topped mountains, plains and a few of the cities of her continent had not subdued her discontent.

She had come across to see Selina only yesterday and to talk about her dissatisfaction. "What does Culpepper hear from Mr. Welling, Selina? Has he decided to settle in his part of the state and practice law under his father? I haven't heard from him. I didn't expect to. I told him I didn't believe I cared to correspond. And I didn't care to. If ever he and I take up our friendship again, his glee is going to be with me, and not at me. Selina, what is it I want? Is it the moon, do you suppose? Or only a path under the moon that goes to somewhere?"

Selina here in the jogging street-car, remembering Maud's question, almost cried for her, its appeal was so great!

Then the old Maud, in all the old vigor and energy, had spoken up again. "I'm going to New York and spend the winter as one of those chaperoned parlor-boarders at some school, if Papa will let me. I'll take up something, if it's only horseback riding," bitterly. "There's a fad for riding-schools right now. I really think maybe I'll look into elocution. Though some way that doesn't sound distingué, does it? Perhaps it had better be designing for carpets or wall-paper, I read about women doing these."

So Maud, splendid, loyal, honest, restless Maud!

Selina looked out the car-window and got her bearings. She had time in plenty yet and could resume her communings. Adele had been away since July at Cape May and to the mountains with her mother and grandmother. She would be home about the first of October. Her several letters to Selina had been listless and devoid of much hope.

"I don't quite see what I'm coming back to," she said in the last one here on Selina's lap "and can only hope Mamma and Grandmamma do see. Débutantes of the first and second rank when they lapse over to a second winter, I've noticed, form into euchre clubs that play in the daytime with each other, and take classes in the Saturday morning sewing-schools. What becomes of lapsed-over débutantes of the third or even as bad as the fourth rank, apparently I'm being taken back home to find out. I didn't tell you before I left that Mr. Cannon has been engaged all this time to a cousin up at his own home. He told me about it when he came to say good-bye. I thought I'd like you to know, and now we'll drop it."

Selina took up the last of the letters. It was from Juliette and she wrote cheerfully in her crisp, spirited backhand.

Both Granddad and Grandfather came around in their stands, after they found I'd actually done the thing, and agreed to put me through the four years of college. And Algy went to see them it seems and up and told them he purposed doing this himself! That, as he understands it, and unless he was laboring under a mistake, he was the person whose name I'd undertaken to bear. And he'sbeen sending me money right along while I'm here with my cousin making up my two conditions. But it's the money both Granddad and Grandfather have put in the bank for me I'm using and shall use. And so I can't understand all this talk from everybody at home of the shocking great deal I've taken from Algy in marrying him in this way. He and I, at any rate, understood it when we talked it over. My cousin asked me the other day what I meant to do about it when I got through college? Did I look on myself as Algy's wife, or did I not? I hadn't thought about this, and it's been worrying me considerably. Do you suppose he thinks that's the way of it? Do you know, Mamma never once spoke to me about the possibilities of my being anybody's wife in my life?

Selina, glancing up, put her letters hastily together and thrust them in her pocket and rang the bell. She had reached the corner where she left the car, half a block from her father's office.

CHAPTER FORTYThe street where Selina left the car was cool and dank between shabby brick stores and shabbier warehouses. It smelled of sugar and molasses and leather. The floor-space occupied by her father for fifteen years was in one of these buildings on the second floor.Coming to it she went up the worn stairs by which this second floor was reached from the street, and, opening the glass-sashed door at the head of the staircase, came in on the long floor-space occupied with boilers, pumps, portable mills, what not, most of them second-hand. She went back through the long aisle between these to the office in the rear, which was shut off by a glass partition and overlooked an alley where, as she remembered it, drays drawn by mules forever stood being loaded or unloaded with heavy freight.The door in this partition was open and through it she could see the interior of the office—two tall, shabby, sloping-topped desks, two tall stools one before either desk, two chairs, a stove and a strip of cocoa matting. That was the whole of it! That and her father and his general factotum, old Jerry,who was clerk, office boy, janitor, and, with some help from the outside for the lifting of machinery, porter. The whole of it, this, where her father for fifteen years had spent the larger part of his waking hours! And for the rest paid the bills Mamma made for the family, and played whist with a congenial group of his own sex once a fortnight! Husbands and fathers then did not always get a great deal out of it themselves!Selina had slowed her steps as she came to the open door. Within the office old Jerry was bringing out ledgers, she had a general idea you called 'em ledgers, or daybooks, she'd heard somewhere of daybooks too. And as he placed these on one of the sloping desks and shuffled out of the way, she saw her father leaning against the other desk and talking to, why, so it was, he was talking with Cousin Willoughby Tomlinson!They had not seen her yet, and something made her stop where she was outside the doorway.Perhaps it was the little hand wave of her father, which was quietly eloquent. "Thank you for coming to me, Willoughby. A little counseling with somebody of one's own family at a time like this is a relief."Somebody of his own family! She liked that! This dear, mistaken Papa! He was talking on. "Yes, it's the end of things here for me, I'm afraid. I've lost my only worth-while agencies. I daresay they're right about it. I'm fogy and they want ahustler to represent 'em for a change. The question is—and I want your counsel about it, Jerry's getting out the books for us—can I make it a wind-up in any possible way, or is it going to have to be an assignment?"Selina turned and hurried back through the long aisle between the oily machines. Her heart beat cruelly, but the rest of her, thoughts, feelings, body itself, was numb. She went down the worn stairway and came out into the dankness of the street.They had not seen her, her father and Cousin Willoughby. She was glad of that. What would have been the use? It would have disturbed them in their talk and upset her father, and she knew now what she'd come to ask without his having to tell her.It was early. She still had part of the time she had allowed for her talk with him. Certainly carfarewasto be considered. She'd walk home, walk and think.Think? Think of what? She knew! Think how if she had been a poor man'ssonwhere she was a poor man'sdaughter, that son would have been prepared and shaped by every condition and circumstance to take care of himself. A son long ago would have been at work.Just what thenisexpected of poor men's daughters by the world they live in and are to exist by?What?The answer came to her with staggering suddennessand illuminating clarity as she never had grasped it before. A truth is a truism and slips through the consciousness glibly until one discovers it for oneself. Another illuminating discovery! Then it is mighty and will prevail!Daughters are expected to solve their economic problems through marriage!Daughters have but the one business in life, which is to find husbands! Marriage as a solution for all her problems is a daughter's profession!And if she fail? If she find no economic salvation for herself through a husband?Rage, fury, shame, swept through Selina. The symbol of such failure stood piteously before her, Auntie! Auntie with a pittance doled out to her barely sufficient for her church dues and her few garments! Auntie stitching on fine muslin hands with no remuneration from any source for the perfection of those stitches, Auntie with all that magnificent endowment of perfect health and untiring energy that wasted itself so piteously in polishing brasses. Fury swept through Selina again, fury and resentment so hot they scorched and seared her. Say, for instance, that had Auntie been the man, and Papa the woman of the two of them?Selina hurried along, one block, two blocks, three blocks, not that time pressed but that misery and indignation drove.Then as she looked up and saw where she was, at the turn of a block where it touched on the courthouseneighborhood and the region of lawyers and their offices, she knew by prescience what was going to happen. Knew it with such certainty that her heart quickened and her breath caught even as a step came hurrying behind her, a cheerful voice as the steps drew nearer, spoke her name, and Culpepper, catching up with her, joined her."Our offices are in the second story back yonder. I saw you out the window as you went by."He took off his straw hat and wiped his forehead with one of those amazingly big and wonderful linen handkerchiefs Cousin Maria gloried in keeping him supplied with. In his vigor, his strength, his confidence, he was overwhelming. He towered above Selina. To surrender to masterfulness like his? To lose oneself through such dominance? Could she? And be at peace forever in the certainty of his care, and the knowledge the fight was his, not hers? It all were easy then if one could.Culpepper's blue eyes bold through those black lashes, but softened by solicitude right now, scanned her face, then looked relieved."You know then?"She nodded, pretty creature that she was, the wealth of her shining hair showing beneath her wreathed hat. "Andyouknow?""I was round with Cousin Robert at the office last night, going over the books and the chances with him."Here he waved a car. It was a belt line and went the long way round, but in its own good time would get them to their home neighborhood.He led her out to the track, put her on the car, and followed. "How'd you know?" he asked as he sat down by her. "Cousin Robert told me he wouldn't mention it to any of you at the house till matters were decided.""He ought to have told it at home from the start," she cried, and explained how she knew and they talked it and the situation at home over in their sorry details. Then she burst forth again, the more passionately that being here on the street-car, it must be restrainedly."Look at me, Culpepper? What am I? What am I fit for? What am I able to do as anything should be done? I've been given no way at all to earn my living. I've never been allowed to order a meal, or go to market to fit me even that way. I've never drawn a check, and I've never paid a bill. I'm past nineteen and at as pitiful a beginning as I was at sixteen."She swallowed, looking ahead, her eyes fixed absently on the only other passenger in the car at the moment. Her profile thus was to Culpepper and he loved it. Fair and clear-cut and fine, he had loved it in her when she was a child.She was seeing not the other passenger at all at whom she gazed so bitterly, poor man, but a grievance because of which she was passionately rebellious."You were made ready from the start, Culpepper; everybody concerned saw to ityouwere prepared. I'm hard about it. I'm resentful. I accuse—who or what is it Idoaccuse?" piteously. "Mamma? Papa? Conditions? The system? If there is any system for bringing up girls, and it isn'talljust haphazard! And Culpepper, at home they're all so helpless! Mamma and Auntie! And Papa's so sensitive and is going to grow pitiful under this second failure and the having to take, as I suppose he will, some little clerkship, somebody'll be charitable enough to give him. It's up to me. And I want it to be up to me. You must see that the whole measure of what I'll ever be depends on my seeing right now that itisup to me. And, Oh, what way is there for me to meet it?"He laid a hand on her arm and nodded abruptly toward the window. She followed his indicating nod and looked out. The car had turned into a residence street, and they were passing the house where Tuttle Jones made his home with his exceedingly well-to-do parents. Pompous and broad, and of comely stone was this home in its wide yard, its flower vases overflowing with bloom and color. But it was to something more pertinent than the Jones' house Culpepper with his nod referred.Tuttle himself and his tally-ho were just wheeling in at the curb, and the groom at the back was leaping down. And if the whole, horses, tandem, coach, Tuttle himself in his belted dust-coat, groombreeched and booted, were more than a bit spectacular, one could rest easy in the knowledge that it was because in this case it was eminently the correct thing to be spectacular. Tuttle was arrived here at home, Selina judged, to get his mother, preparatory to gathering up the remainder of his party, herself among these."Tuttle will be by for me by the time we reach home, Culpepper. He's horrified that I haven't had my share in social experience as included in races."The car jogged past, and as it came to the corner, the point nearest their own neighborhood, Culpepper rang the bell.As they reached the pavement he spoke. His eyes were narrowed and he did not look at her. For the first time in their lives he was approaching a subject to her with entire seriousness."I reckon we'll have to allow it was coincidence offered me Tuttle and his circus wagon just now. What I meant was, honey, that the world and the system, as you call it, would point to Tuttle and tell you you've done everything and even more, expected of you. Catch my meaning?"Did she? Her cheeks blazed. He was only corroborating what within the half-hour she had said for herself.Culpepper was going on, still avoiding all look at her. "And I want to say further, honey, that Tuttle's a great chap, Tut's all right. I gave in when he showed what was in him by appreciatingyou." His eyes swept around to her here with mock challenge. "How's that my lady, for magnanimity toward a flaunting rival?"She didn't pretend not to understand him. She was rising to honesty these days through a force within her which itself craved truth. Color, however, had surged to her face with a violence which the rose lining to the open parasol on her shoulder could not be held responsible for—a growing violence, which finally overcame her, and she stumbled.His hand quick and sure, righted her little gesture.She made a disclaiming with her head."The world and the system may be mistaken," she said hotly. And as she said it she now looked straight ahead, though her face was spirited.He checked their steps. Their own corner was in sight, a block straight ahead."So?" from this Culpepper, watching her. "So, honey? All the better then. It clears the decks. It seemed decenter somehow to include his claims. And now for mine. Everybody knows where I stand. What I want. You know. My mother for godspeed, when I came away in August, said, 'Go on down and take your job and marry Selina.' Will you do it, honey?"Her color was gone with the violence with which it came, leaving her white. A tremor went over her.Watching her as closely still, he went on. "What a fool time and fool place to ask it, where I can't pick you up and tell you a few things. Can't comfortyou, honey, the way we used to comfort your hurt fingers and feelings when you'd bring 'em to us when you were around five! Remember how I used to cure 'em, Selina?" coaxingly. "And ole Miss'll belong to us? She's a little more mine even than she's yours? What say now, honey, don't let's go teasing each other this way any longer?"Up the home street ahead of them Tuttle, his tally-ho a-blossom now with gay parasols, was wheeling round the far intersection and about to come toward them. A moment or so more, and as they themselves would arrive at Selina's squat house, he would be wheeling in at the curb before it."As you say, Culpepper, it's a foolish time to try to talk. But I must try, and quickly, before we get there, please."Her color was all gone so that even her pretty lips, a bit compressed to hide their trembling, were white. So white his hand went out to touch hers, hanging at her side, for reassurance.But hers clenched so that he could not grasp it. Blessed child! And yet so obviously now, woman, too, through the child."Let me talk, please, Culpepper. Thank you for wanting me and for telling me. Though I don't believe you've ever realized that I've resented the way you've taken me for granted, you and Cousin Maria, and Auntie, and, yes, even Papa. But that's not what I want to speak about. It's this. There's no power in heaven or earth right now couldmake me marry either you or Tuttle! If he asks me to-day, and I won't hold him off any longer, I'll say so to him. When I come to marrying, I see it perfectly clearly and of a sudden to-day, it's going to be beyond any imagining or shade of possibility that's it's because it's a solution for me! I'm finding myself a little bit these days. I'm going to prove what I've found now. When I come to marry, it's going to be because I choose to give up independence to do it. How I'll get the independence I'm sure I don't know now, but I will get it," piteously. Then, "Culpepper, Oh, Culpepper," beseechingly as she turned toward him, a cry as from one bereft and needing help, "don'tyou see?Can'tyou see? Put yourself whereIam, and understandforme!"They were crossing the home corner now. Tuttle and his glittering show were wheeling in at the curb before the ugly little house. The neighborhood surreptitiously was at its windows. The breeched and booted groom had leaped down.It was this Tuttle up on the box who wouldn't shame his God by meeting him with anything less than entire correctness. Selina would try not to fail this kindly Tuttle now."Coming," she called with pretty gayety to the company aloft as she came in speaking distance, with a lift and a flirt of her parasol before surrendering it to Culpepper for lowering.Then to Culpepper imploringly. "Speak to Mamma and Auntie for me and reassure them aboutPapa, won't you, Culpepper? I'll have no chance."The coach was stationary at the curb, and so by now were Selina and Culpepper. He was big and splendid; she was slim and fair. Greetings were pelting down on them, and Tuttle with an eye on his horseflesh had risen on the box."No," from Selina to Tuttle aloft, "don't get down. OrcanJehu on the box get down? Culpepper'll put me up. Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Sampson, Miss Lyle, Mr. Haven, you all up there know Mr. Buxton? I've never mounted a coach before, and I'm horribly afraid I'll perpetrate what a friend of my youth, when she sprained her ankle, called afaux pas. Do give me your hand, Culpepper, and put me up?"Blessed child!And did her hand, as he took it, close on his for the instant, beseechingly as it were? Those soft fingers of hers cling to his? Hold to his as though loath to leave them?He must have thought they did, for after he had put her up on the box to the place directed by Tuttle beside himself, pretty creature that she was, still tremulous but bravely gay with it to wring your heartstrings, this Culpepper made pretence of need for more care of her, and swinging up on the step to arrange her skirt from chance contact with any brake or such matter, whispered softly up in the vernacular he kept for her and ole Miss."Honey!""Everybody waved and Culpepper was left standing there."And the while a chorus was chanting from the back seats, "Listen to us, Selina! Listen, Selina!Haveyou heard about Amanthus? Turn around and listen to us!Haveyou heard about Amanthus?"And here Mrs. Jones, leaning forward, addressed herself to Culpepper down again on the curb. "Mr. Buxton I seem to remember that Mr. Tate is a friend of yours? Haveyouheard about Amanthus?"The chorus resumed itself, arising from Mrs. Sampson, Miss Lyle, and Mr. Haven behind Mrs. Jones."Go on.""Don't keep 'em waiting.""Tell 'em about Amanthus.""Amanthus," said Mrs. Jones, "was married at St. George's in London, yesterday, to Mr. Cyril Doe. A cable from Mrs. Harrison to her bank, which is Tuttle's bank, came to-day."Amanthus had lived up toherbusiness in life!The whip touched the leader, the coach wheeled, everybody waved, and Culpepper was left standing there.Auntie called to him from the door. She had seen him from the window and come down. He went in to her there on the doorstep and put his arm around her and kissed her."Ole Miss, what do you suppose, I've just been given to cherish most of everything in the world?""Are you in earnest, Culpepper, or teasing? I never know. I'm a bit unstrung, and so's Lavinia, over this trouble, whatever it is, hanging over Robert. What is it that's been given to you to cherish?"She spoke with concern."Don't you worry, ole Miss, it's mine for cherishing, not yours. You're no worry.Youbelong to another generation in daughters of Shiloh that did your dancing in your vineyard according to custom, and have nothing to reproachyourpast with. The daughters of Shiloh to-day are declining to dance, ma'am, and are plucking the grapes in the vineyard instead. I need your coddling and your comforting. A daughter of Shiloh, among the dancers and the grapes, has handed me for my cherishing fruit of her gathering called a point of view.""Whatever do you mean, Culpepper? I never know when you're in earnest, or not?""She thinkssheis, ole Miss, that fair young daughter of Shiloh. I don't know just what to think, myself!""Are you speaking of Selina, Culpepper?""Who else? Ole Miss, I love her so and I want her. Where'd she pick up this whim?"

The street where Selina left the car was cool and dank between shabby brick stores and shabbier warehouses. It smelled of sugar and molasses and leather. The floor-space occupied by her father for fifteen years was in one of these buildings on the second floor.

Coming to it she went up the worn stairs by which this second floor was reached from the street, and, opening the glass-sashed door at the head of the staircase, came in on the long floor-space occupied with boilers, pumps, portable mills, what not, most of them second-hand. She went back through the long aisle between these to the office in the rear, which was shut off by a glass partition and overlooked an alley where, as she remembered it, drays drawn by mules forever stood being loaded or unloaded with heavy freight.

The door in this partition was open and through it she could see the interior of the office—two tall, shabby, sloping-topped desks, two tall stools one before either desk, two chairs, a stove and a strip of cocoa matting. That was the whole of it! That and her father and his general factotum, old Jerry,who was clerk, office boy, janitor, and, with some help from the outside for the lifting of machinery, porter. The whole of it, this, where her father for fifteen years had spent the larger part of his waking hours! And for the rest paid the bills Mamma made for the family, and played whist with a congenial group of his own sex once a fortnight! Husbands and fathers then did not always get a great deal out of it themselves!

Selina had slowed her steps as she came to the open door. Within the office old Jerry was bringing out ledgers, she had a general idea you called 'em ledgers, or daybooks, she'd heard somewhere of daybooks too. And as he placed these on one of the sloping desks and shuffled out of the way, she saw her father leaning against the other desk and talking to, why, so it was, he was talking with Cousin Willoughby Tomlinson!

They had not seen her yet, and something made her stop where she was outside the doorway.

Perhaps it was the little hand wave of her father, which was quietly eloquent. "Thank you for coming to me, Willoughby. A little counseling with somebody of one's own family at a time like this is a relief."

Somebody of his own family! She liked that! This dear, mistaken Papa! He was talking on. "Yes, it's the end of things here for me, I'm afraid. I've lost my only worth-while agencies. I daresay they're right about it. I'm fogy and they want ahustler to represent 'em for a change. The question is—and I want your counsel about it, Jerry's getting out the books for us—can I make it a wind-up in any possible way, or is it going to have to be an assignment?"

Selina turned and hurried back through the long aisle between the oily machines. Her heart beat cruelly, but the rest of her, thoughts, feelings, body itself, was numb. She went down the worn stairway and came out into the dankness of the street.

They had not seen her, her father and Cousin Willoughby. She was glad of that. What would have been the use? It would have disturbed them in their talk and upset her father, and she knew now what she'd come to ask without his having to tell her.

It was early. She still had part of the time she had allowed for her talk with him. Certainly carfarewasto be considered. She'd walk home, walk and think.

Think? Think of what? She knew! Think how if she had been a poor man'ssonwhere she was a poor man'sdaughter, that son would have been prepared and shaped by every condition and circumstance to take care of himself. A son long ago would have been at work.

Just what thenisexpected of poor men's daughters by the world they live in and are to exist by?What?

The answer came to her with staggering suddennessand illuminating clarity as she never had grasped it before. A truth is a truism and slips through the consciousness glibly until one discovers it for oneself. Another illuminating discovery! Then it is mighty and will prevail!

Daughters are expected to solve their economic problems through marriage!Daughters have but the one business in life, which is to find husbands! Marriage as a solution for all her problems is a daughter's profession!

And if she fail? If she find no economic salvation for herself through a husband?

Rage, fury, shame, swept through Selina. The symbol of such failure stood piteously before her, Auntie! Auntie with a pittance doled out to her barely sufficient for her church dues and her few garments! Auntie stitching on fine muslin hands with no remuneration from any source for the perfection of those stitches, Auntie with all that magnificent endowment of perfect health and untiring energy that wasted itself so piteously in polishing brasses. Fury swept through Selina again, fury and resentment so hot they scorched and seared her. Say, for instance, that had Auntie been the man, and Papa the woman of the two of them?

Selina hurried along, one block, two blocks, three blocks, not that time pressed but that misery and indignation drove.

Then as she looked up and saw where she was, at the turn of a block where it touched on the courthouseneighborhood and the region of lawyers and their offices, she knew by prescience what was going to happen. Knew it with such certainty that her heart quickened and her breath caught even as a step came hurrying behind her, a cheerful voice as the steps drew nearer, spoke her name, and Culpepper, catching up with her, joined her.

"Our offices are in the second story back yonder. I saw you out the window as you went by."

He took off his straw hat and wiped his forehead with one of those amazingly big and wonderful linen handkerchiefs Cousin Maria gloried in keeping him supplied with. In his vigor, his strength, his confidence, he was overwhelming. He towered above Selina. To surrender to masterfulness like his? To lose oneself through such dominance? Could she? And be at peace forever in the certainty of his care, and the knowledge the fight was his, not hers? It all were easy then if one could.

Culpepper's blue eyes bold through those black lashes, but softened by solicitude right now, scanned her face, then looked relieved.

"You know then?"

She nodded, pretty creature that she was, the wealth of her shining hair showing beneath her wreathed hat. "Andyouknow?"

"I was round with Cousin Robert at the office last night, going over the books and the chances with him."

Here he waved a car. It was a belt line and went the long way round, but in its own good time would get them to their home neighborhood.

He led her out to the track, put her on the car, and followed. "How'd you know?" he asked as he sat down by her. "Cousin Robert told me he wouldn't mention it to any of you at the house till matters were decided."

"He ought to have told it at home from the start," she cried, and explained how she knew and they talked it and the situation at home over in their sorry details. Then she burst forth again, the more passionately that being here on the street-car, it must be restrainedly.

"Look at me, Culpepper? What am I? What am I fit for? What am I able to do as anything should be done? I've been given no way at all to earn my living. I've never been allowed to order a meal, or go to market to fit me even that way. I've never drawn a check, and I've never paid a bill. I'm past nineteen and at as pitiful a beginning as I was at sixteen."

She swallowed, looking ahead, her eyes fixed absently on the only other passenger in the car at the moment. Her profile thus was to Culpepper and he loved it. Fair and clear-cut and fine, he had loved it in her when she was a child.

She was seeing not the other passenger at all at whom she gazed so bitterly, poor man, but a grievance because of which she was passionately rebellious.

"You were made ready from the start, Culpepper; everybody concerned saw to ityouwere prepared. I'm hard about it. I'm resentful. I accuse—who or what is it Idoaccuse?" piteously. "Mamma? Papa? Conditions? The system? If there is any system for bringing up girls, and it isn'talljust haphazard! And Culpepper, at home they're all so helpless! Mamma and Auntie! And Papa's so sensitive and is going to grow pitiful under this second failure and the having to take, as I suppose he will, some little clerkship, somebody'll be charitable enough to give him. It's up to me. And I want it to be up to me. You must see that the whole measure of what I'll ever be depends on my seeing right now that itisup to me. And, Oh, what way is there for me to meet it?"

He laid a hand on her arm and nodded abruptly toward the window. She followed his indicating nod and looked out. The car had turned into a residence street, and they were passing the house where Tuttle Jones made his home with his exceedingly well-to-do parents. Pompous and broad, and of comely stone was this home in its wide yard, its flower vases overflowing with bloom and color. But it was to something more pertinent than the Jones' house Culpepper with his nod referred.

Tuttle himself and his tally-ho were just wheeling in at the curb, and the groom at the back was leaping down. And if the whole, horses, tandem, coach, Tuttle himself in his belted dust-coat, groombreeched and booted, were more than a bit spectacular, one could rest easy in the knowledge that it was because in this case it was eminently the correct thing to be spectacular. Tuttle was arrived here at home, Selina judged, to get his mother, preparatory to gathering up the remainder of his party, herself among these.

"Tuttle will be by for me by the time we reach home, Culpepper. He's horrified that I haven't had my share in social experience as included in races."

The car jogged past, and as it came to the corner, the point nearest their own neighborhood, Culpepper rang the bell.

As they reached the pavement he spoke. His eyes were narrowed and he did not look at her. For the first time in their lives he was approaching a subject to her with entire seriousness.

"I reckon we'll have to allow it was coincidence offered me Tuttle and his circus wagon just now. What I meant was, honey, that the world and the system, as you call it, would point to Tuttle and tell you you've done everything and even more, expected of you. Catch my meaning?"

Did she? Her cheeks blazed. He was only corroborating what within the half-hour she had said for herself.

Culpepper was going on, still avoiding all look at her. "And I want to say further, honey, that Tuttle's a great chap, Tut's all right. I gave in when he showed what was in him by appreciatingyou." His eyes swept around to her here with mock challenge. "How's that my lady, for magnanimity toward a flaunting rival?"

She didn't pretend not to understand him. She was rising to honesty these days through a force within her which itself craved truth. Color, however, had surged to her face with a violence which the rose lining to the open parasol on her shoulder could not be held responsible for—a growing violence, which finally overcame her, and she stumbled.

His hand quick and sure, righted her little gesture.

She made a disclaiming with her head.

"The world and the system may be mistaken," she said hotly. And as she said it she now looked straight ahead, though her face was spirited.

He checked their steps. Their own corner was in sight, a block straight ahead.

"So?" from this Culpepper, watching her. "So, honey? All the better then. It clears the decks. It seemed decenter somehow to include his claims. And now for mine. Everybody knows where I stand. What I want. You know. My mother for godspeed, when I came away in August, said, 'Go on down and take your job and marry Selina.' Will you do it, honey?"

Her color was gone with the violence with which it came, leaving her white. A tremor went over her.

Watching her as closely still, he went on. "What a fool time and fool place to ask it, where I can't pick you up and tell you a few things. Can't comfortyou, honey, the way we used to comfort your hurt fingers and feelings when you'd bring 'em to us when you were around five! Remember how I used to cure 'em, Selina?" coaxingly. "And ole Miss'll belong to us? She's a little more mine even than she's yours? What say now, honey, don't let's go teasing each other this way any longer?"

Up the home street ahead of them Tuttle, his tally-ho a-blossom now with gay parasols, was wheeling round the far intersection and about to come toward them. A moment or so more, and as they themselves would arrive at Selina's squat house, he would be wheeling in at the curb before it.

"As you say, Culpepper, it's a foolish time to try to talk. But I must try, and quickly, before we get there, please."

Her color was all gone so that even her pretty lips, a bit compressed to hide their trembling, were white. So white his hand went out to touch hers, hanging at her side, for reassurance.

But hers clenched so that he could not grasp it. Blessed child! And yet so obviously now, woman, too, through the child.

"Let me talk, please, Culpepper. Thank you for wanting me and for telling me. Though I don't believe you've ever realized that I've resented the way you've taken me for granted, you and Cousin Maria, and Auntie, and, yes, even Papa. But that's not what I want to speak about. It's this. There's no power in heaven or earth right now couldmake me marry either you or Tuttle! If he asks me to-day, and I won't hold him off any longer, I'll say so to him. When I come to marrying, I see it perfectly clearly and of a sudden to-day, it's going to be beyond any imagining or shade of possibility that's it's because it's a solution for me! I'm finding myself a little bit these days. I'm going to prove what I've found now. When I come to marry, it's going to be because I choose to give up independence to do it. How I'll get the independence I'm sure I don't know now, but I will get it," piteously. Then, "Culpepper, Oh, Culpepper," beseechingly as she turned toward him, a cry as from one bereft and needing help, "don'tyou see?Can'tyou see? Put yourself whereIam, and understandforme!"

They were crossing the home corner now. Tuttle and his glittering show were wheeling in at the curb before the ugly little house. The neighborhood surreptitiously was at its windows. The breeched and booted groom had leaped down.

It was this Tuttle up on the box who wouldn't shame his God by meeting him with anything less than entire correctness. Selina would try not to fail this kindly Tuttle now.

"Coming," she called with pretty gayety to the company aloft as she came in speaking distance, with a lift and a flirt of her parasol before surrendering it to Culpepper for lowering.

Then to Culpepper imploringly. "Speak to Mamma and Auntie for me and reassure them aboutPapa, won't you, Culpepper? I'll have no chance."

The coach was stationary at the curb, and so by now were Selina and Culpepper. He was big and splendid; she was slim and fair. Greetings were pelting down on them, and Tuttle with an eye on his horseflesh had risen on the box.

"No," from Selina to Tuttle aloft, "don't get down. OrcanJehu on the box get down? Culpepper'll put me up. Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Sampson, Miss Lyle, Mr. Haven, you all up there know Mr. Buxton? I've never mounted a coach before, and I'm horribly afraid I'll perpetrate what a friend of my youth, when she sprained her ankle, called afaux pas. Do give me your hand, Culpepper, and put me up?"

Blessed child!

And did her hand, as he took it, close on his for the instant, beseechingly as it were? Those soft fingers of hers cling to his? Hold to his as though loath to leave them?

He must have thought they did, for after he had put her up on the box to the place directed by Tuttle beside himself, pretty creature that she was, still tremulous but bravely gay with it to wring your heartstrings, this Culpepper made pretence of need for more care of her, and swinging up on the step to arrange her skirt from chance contact with any brake or such matter, whispered softly up in the vernacular he kept for her and ole Miss.

"Honey!"

"Everybody waved and Culpepper was left standing there."

"Everybody waved and Culpepper was left standing there."

"Everybody waved and Culpepper was left standing there."

And the while a chorus was chanting from the back seats, "Listen to us, Selina! Listen, Selina!Haveyou heard about Amanthus? Turn around and listen to us!Haveyou heard about Amanthus?"

And here Mrs. Jones, leaning forward, addressed herself to Culpepper down again on the curb. "Mr. Buxton I seem to remember that Mr. Tate is a friend of yours? Haveyouheard about Amanthus?"

The chorus resumed itself, arising from Mrs. Sampson, Miss Lyle, and Mr. Haven behind Mrs. Jones.

"Go on."

"Don't keep 'em waiting."

"Tell 'em about Amanthus."

"Amanthus," said Mrs. Jones, "was married at St. George's in London, yesterday, to Mr. Cyril Doe. A cable from Mrs. Harrison to her bank, which is Tuttle's bank, came to-day."

Amanthus had lived up toherbusiness in life!

The whip touched the leader, the coach wheeled, everybody waved, and Culpepper was left standing there.

Auntie called to him from the door. She had seen him from the window and come down. He went in to her there on the doorstep and put his arm around her and kissed her.

"Ole Miss, what do you suppose, I've just been given to cherish most of everything in the world?"

"Are you in earnest, Culpepper, or teasing? I never know. I'm a bit unstrung, and so's Lavinia, over this trouble, whatever it is, hanging over Robert. What is it that's been given to you to cherish?"

She spoke with concern.

"Don't you worry, ole Miss, it's mine for cherishing, not yours. You're no worry.Youbelong to another generation in daughters of Shiloh that did your dancing in your vineyard according to custom, and have nothing to reproachyourpast with. The daughters of Shiloh to-day are declining to dance, ma'am, and are plucking the grapes in the vineyard instead. I need your coddling and your comforting. A daughter of Shiloh, among the dancers and the grapes, has handed me for my cherishing fruit of her gathering called a point of view."

"Whatever do you mean, Culpepper? I never know when you're in earnest, or not?"

"She thinkssheis, ole Miss, that fair young daughter of Shiloh. I don't know just what to think, myself!"

"Are you speaking of Selina, Culpepper?"

"Who else? Ole Miss, I love her so and I want her. Where'd she pick up this whim?"

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