CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONEIt was a gratifying entry that finally was made at the Carters, Uncle Bruce ultimately being pacified and left at home in the care of the English servant, and Mr. Jones, after meeting the guests and hearing the program for the evening, glancing across at Selina in her white net dress and evening cape, and asking to go along.Papa and Mamma were justly proud of their guests, pre-eminently the older one. And Mr. Roswell Carter was equally and as sincerely gratified to find them his guests. He asked Papa to arrange with Uncle Bruce that he be privileged to have a dinner followed by a smoker at the club that the men of the community be given the opportunity to meet the gentlemen. And Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle coming sailing up in all her splendor to Papa and Mamma and the distinguished strangers, asked to be permitted to arrange for a dinner party on the next evening.But while these staid elders were doing the honors thus to the guests from the old world over in the more sedate library, Selina was feeling the thrill and the importance of her entrance into the embowered parlors with Mr. Tuttle Jones.Adele in an even overly-modish dress which sat uneasily upon her, dear Adele with her conscientious face and her serious eyes, stood between her mother and her grandmother, a seeming shrine of palms and floral decorations for background.Selina deep in her heart was proud of the casual manner with which she came up and presented Mr. Jones. There was no question of his welcome being assured. Mrs. Grosvenor, elaborate as to hair and impressive gown, smiled graciously upon this sought-after young man, and anticipating her daughter, spoke first: "It is very lovely in you to challenge our leniency as you put it, Mr. Jones, and come over with Selina. She is like a second daughter in our house, I may say, she and Adele, my granddaughter, being inseparable. Adele, have you spoken to Mr. Jones?"Mrs. Carter, also elaborate as to gown and hair, was equally affable: "Charming old Mrs. Jinnie Cumming has given us the pleasure of having her with us this evening. It is inevitable she is going to demand you come and speak to her? Shall I anticipate and take you to her? My duties to arriving guests seem to be about over. Mrs. Cumming claims to have waived formality, too, and has brought a drolly delightful nephew with her, a recent comer in the city."And Mrs. Carter laid a hand on the arm of Mr. Jones and carried him off, Mrs. Grosvenor turned to bespeak a possible next guest if there be one, andAdele sometimes surprisingly dry-spoken for a girl of eighteen, laid her hand on Selina's gloved arm."Unfortunately that's just like Mamma, overlooking the fact he was your escort because she wanted him then herself. And who do you suppose the droll nephew is that Mrs. Jinnie Cumming brought with her? The humor of it's helped me bear up under this ridiculous dress. I must look like an irresponsible in its spangles, don't I, Selina, for I feel like one?""It's really a wonderful dress, Adele. Who's the droll nephew?""Our Mr. Cannon that Mamma wouldn't let me ask here to the reception to-night. I was perfectly hateful and threw it up to her a bit ago."Did Adele here look away and her cheek grow pink with rare color? Was she pleased that it should be Mr. Cannon?With a change of tone she spoke again. "Juliette wouldn't come at the last moment. Selina, she's unhappy, and I think we ought to tell you so. It happened while you were gone." Again with a change of tone: "Did you ever see anything so lovely as Amanthus and so entrancing?""Our Mr. Doe thinks so," said Selina. "Witness, please."Across the hall in the open doorway of the library stood Mr. Cyril Doe, the secretary, endeavoring to fit a glass into his eye with all the awkwardness ofone about to lose an arm or a leg or two from sheer inability to hold on to them."Endeavoring to fit a glass into his eye.""Did you ever before see a monocle except on the stage, Selina? In 'Lord Dundreary' and that sort of thing? I never have," from Adele. "And the truly wonderful grimaces he's making getting it to stay! It's sort of horribly fascinating to see if he'sgoing to succeed. There, it's done, and what's it in place to gaze on?"And following the undoubted line of Mr. Doe's vision, as indicated by Selina, Adele came to Amanthus near the embowered newell post, a dozen feet away from the library doorway.Amanthus! Dimpling for three callow youths surrounding her. Amanthus of the laughing eyes, the laughing cheeks, the laughing lips, Amanthus of the sunny hair and violet gaze, who laughed, as now, as the flowers blow, nor knew why more than they! Amanthus, supple and young and enchanting, in floating clouds of gauzy yellow, a wreath of buds upon her daffodil hair, and slender slippers of daffodil gold upon her buoyant feet! Maud stood near her talking to some other callow youth, handsome enough in her white tarlatan dress with glossy green leaves and their berries in her red-brown hair, and young and vital, too, but not for Mr. Cyril Doe. It was upon that vision known to earth as Amanthus this monocled, British, chinless person was gazing."And Mr. Jones, after declining our party, came with you, Selina," from Adele. "We'll be regarding you as another Amanthus."Selina arched her pretty throat, then remembered to be modest. It was hard not to be complacent about it just a bit, the more so that Mr. Jones having shaken loose from Mrs. Carter, here was seen making his way through the crowded parlors backto her. But at least if she was not so really modest as she could wish about it, she could dissemble."Adele, look out in the hall again," thus she sought to put the matter aside. "Mr. Doe has found Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle, and she is taking him to Amanthus."The next day Maud spoke accusingly to Selina. One rarely deceived Maud. "Don't be self-deceiving about it. Don't be too scathing of Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Grosvenor. Look into your own heart first, if you please, Selina. You were the more elated over taking Mr. Jones than over any of the rest of it, yourself, and you needn't tell me, for one, you weren't! The big frog in the home pool means more to the little frogs than the big fish from strange waters. I suppose I'd have been, too."The evening of this same day Selina told Culpepper of Maud's accusation. Papa and Mamma, Uncle Bruce and the guests were gone to Mrs. Tuttle's dinner party, and Culpepper on request had come round to spend the evening with her and Auntie. It was a comfort thus to have him in the family, making it possible to ask such things of him, and to talk to him about quite personal matters. He and she were in the parlor before the flickering fire and the burnished brasses, and Auntie in the next room was playing her evening game of Napoleon solitaire on the dining-table."Maud didn't quite say I was an incipient snob, Culpepper," Selina commented after telling him thestory of the whole evening, the rescue of Uncle Bruce by Mr. Jones included. "She didn't actually say I was as despicable as that, but she implied it." Selina flushed and grew even a little more thoughtful. "And the truth of it is, Culpepper, I had to admit to Maud her accusation in a sense is true. I was elated over taking Mr. Jones. But Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Grosvenor could not have been made to acknowledge on any less worldly grounds the something I had come to recognize as necessary to my Wistar self-respect, and especially if I were to continue going with Adele. I've been thinking it over and I'm right about this. But there's worse! I flaunted my new evening cape and was complacent over it. I even felt myself pitying Mamma and feeling cross toward her about her old scarf. Whereas if I come down to facts, Cousin Anna's money which I still owe her, went to replace that used to buy the cape and some other things. It isn't the actual cape I'm meaning, though, nor the literal episode of taking Mr. Jones to the Carter's, Culpepper? Of course you know that? What I'm worrying over is what Maud calls 'the principle back of the thing.' I'm not one bit pleased with what I see in myself that way. Do we go on forever climbing three feet out of the well by day, and falling back two feet by night? Will I ever get anywhere?"The iliad of her little woes, piteously assailing those walls of half-knowledge shutting her out from her mede of common-sense and common understanding!The odyssey of her little wanderings following half-truths, misled by platitudes, failing ever of the haven of truth where she would be! Alas for you, Mamma and Auntie, who with all your yearnings over her, have so pitifully equipped your one ewe lamb for life!Culpepper the while Selina talked, thus guileless of her guilelessness, thus innocent of her innocence, had been gazing at her across the space of the hearth between them, his eyes upon her, but following thoughts of his own. He came to himself with a start.Now that she, this pretty girl here before the fire with him in this intimate aloofness, was growing up, tall and fair, that crown of pale, shining hair distinguishing her, it came upon him at times such as now, with a clutch, a catching of his breath, to have her still so ingenuously sweet, still so honest, still so utterly and so endearingly confiding. It disarmed him. It broke down his control. It got into that blatant blood of his and for moments made him see red and feel afraid for himself. He wanted to seize her hands there in her lap, and kiss their helpless palms! No, he wanted to seizeherand kissher, kiss her until she awoke to the facts of life and—understood. And this achieved, lay down the mandate to her that he was here, and all the while had been here, for the man-made and Heaven-sanctioned purpose of taking material and every other sort of care of her, the woman. His stepmother knew it, hisCousin Robert knew it, ole Miss, he'd take his oath, more than half suspected it.True, he had nothing whatever of his own, only a princely allowance from that big-souled person, his stepmother. But God Almighty, what of that? He'd have all that he needed having in his own good time. He was the stripe and make that batters any old thing out of the way of the going if it be mistaken enough to get there—the sort, in fact, that succeeds. The baffling thing here was of a different nature, being Selina herself. You can't crush a bud into its bloom by the mere force of your longing; you can't kiss a child that knows no passion, with passion!Culpepper, twenty-three himself, but no less sophisticated than he would be when he was thirty-three, pulled himself together, big, good-looking young giant that he was, the effect of whose bodily presence here was always to further dwarf the shabby little parlor.The soft flip of Auntie's cards being dealt out on the table came from the next room. It was like a restoring touch from her calm personality."One thing is cleared up for me by last night's happenings," declared Culpepper cheerfully."What?" from Selina. She had been thinking how comfy and nice it was, this long chatty evening with him, and the firelight, and the always restful sense of Auntie's proximity."Why, Tuttle, or Tuts, as we of his class at college called him, was in training for a color-sensethose four years, matching suits to socks, and socks to neckties. But for that nicety for color so faithfully attained, where would little Mr. Bruce be right now?"Auntie's voice came in from the next room. "Mr. Jones is a gentleman, and has proved it, Culpepper. I won't have you decrying him.""All right, ole Miss; what you say goes. What we at college kicked about was that he was such a lady.""Culpepper, not another word," from Auntie."Just to ask how much longer the high and mighties, these Britishers, are with us," pleaded Culpepper, "so I'll know when it's safe for me to show up around here in the old way?""One more day only," Selina reassured him, "Mr. Carter's giving them a dinner and smoker at the club to-morrow evening. Mrs. Harrison has arranged for them to stop for a day at Selimcroft, her Uncle's stock-farm up your way, as they go. She discovered that they want to see some of our typical horses and stables and training tracks and such, you'll know just what, better than I do. Mrs. Harrison and Amanthus are going up for the day with them. Amanthus is so impressed by Mr. Doe, the secretary, she's overcome. It hasn't often happened to Amanthus. He told her for some reason or other, that everything that's good form in England just now wears bangs. And she asked him, you know how Amanthus does ask such things, if he meant horses?"CHAPTER TWENTY-TWOSelina put on hat and jacket the day after Uncle Bruce's guests left, and went over to see Juliette. The Caldwell house was of brick with gables, a bay, a small Gothic porch, pointed windows and clambering, leafless vines. Juliette's father, as said before, was a rising business man, and his own and his pretty wife's people were well to do. There was considerable extravagance and laxity and also waste in the household, and the children up to a certain point, from Juliette, the oldest, down through her two younger sisters and the son just toddling, did pretty much as they pleased.But of late everyone was worried about Juliette. She was dauncie, as the darkies say, in other words, listless and indifferent and pale. In all the years past this same gay little Juliette had stood with her friends as embodiment of life and vividness and enthusiasm.Mrs. Caldwell opened the side door to Selina's tap. She had a gingham apron with a bib over her rather elaborate crimson cashmere wrapper. Dark like Juliette, and like her also in being aquiline and vivid, and still a bit frivolous in her tastes, now she lookeddisheveled and cross and tired. They were an outspoken as well as a bit haphazard household, these prosperous Caldwells."No cook since Monday, Selina, and neither nurse for the baby or house-boy to-day. When one of them gets mad, the others always take it up and follow. What we're coming to I'm sure I can't say. The older servants such as my mother's been used to dealing with, are dying off, and the younger ones don't know how to do a thing and won't let you show them."It was a familiar plaint, and Selina was so accustomed to it, it slid nowadays from the consciousness as housekeepers voiced it, like a too-oft repeated platitude. Cousin Anna had such trouble continually; Mrs. Williams, while Selina taught there, never seemed to have her full quota of servants at any one time and never ceased to say so, and the Addisons and even the Carters were complainers, too. Selina took Mrs. Caldwell's grievance as a matter of course."I've been coming over for a good long visit with Judy ever since I got home," she replied, "but if you're busy, you'll need her, and won't want me, Mrs. Caldwell?""Juliette? I'm glad you've come hunting her. I'm sure I don't know what we're going to do with her, Selina. She's never been stubborn or ugly in her life before. It's been going on now for sometime, this undercurrent of resentment to her father, and I don't mind speaking out with you, Selina, we lookon you quite as one of ourselves, it's come to a break, an open rupture between them. Her father can't see it anyway but that she's been underhand in her defiance, and she won't allow that she cares in the least what he thinks. Of course, I don't know how much she may have told you. Go on up to her room. The little girls are at school, and I'm thankful the baby's asleep. Juliette and I've just finished in the kitchen and she's upstairs starting to straighten the bedrooms."Selina went through the halls to the front stairway. She didn't fancy the Caldwells' house. Everything was over-elaborate and nothing very well cared for and there seemed a regrettable mixture. She couldn't bear the bisque cupid, for instance, which hung from the costly gilt chandelier. And she and Adele and Maud deplored the portrait of Juliette at three which hung over the mantelpiece. Cunning Judy as she really had been, here forever seated on a rose-bank, her curls in tiers, her cheeks carmine, and a sash of blue bound round her tummy so precisely that her embroidered skirts flew out beneath as though released. And Selina disliked the showy pattern in the velvet carpet on the halls and up the stairs. But she did love Juliette.She went up the steps. She knew something of the trouble between Juliette and her father, and could guess what had brought about the present rupture. About the time she went South, Juliette had dared be audacious in a way that caused herfriends to hold breath, terrified at thought of what the storm would be when discovery by her father came.Having reached the hallway above, Selina tapped on a door which was ajar at the head of the stairs, the door to Juliette's own room. At the sound, Juliette, in an apron like the one upon her mother, turned, and seeing Selina in the doorway, sat down suddenly on an ottoman at hand and resting her black-tressed little head against the edge of the bureau she was dusting, went into passionate weeping. It was as if the sight of her friend loosed the pent-up flood of her unhappiness.Quickly enough words equally as passionate made their way through the wild sobbing. "It's the stupidity of Papa's position, his utter lack of reason, that's so maddening, Selina. 'I'll see a daughter of mine going to college!' is the whole of it. And his unfairness, too, stops any attempted answering on my part after he's had his say, with 'That'll do now. I don't care to hear any more on the subject.' And what's his argument, I'd like to know, Selina? He hasn't any. Simply none. Just the senseless, stubborn stand he's got from somewhere. 'I'll see a daughter of mine going to college. Get busy and help your mother with the younger children and the house, and don't let's hear any further nonsense on the subject.'"Selina sat down aghast. Yielding by disposition herself, and product of a lifelong submission to aloving if sometimes paralyzing authority against which she had lifted a tentative protest only once or twice, she gazed at Juliette dismayed. At pretty Judy, facing her from the ottoman, she herself now on a nearby chair, their young knees almost a-touch, a miniature, flashing, apparently altogether volatile creature, suggestive of the ruby-throated hummingbirds that darted about Auntie's flowers and vines in the backyard in summer!This little Juliette had been raised under a certain amount of authority, too, but the authority of a young and complacent father who overindulged his family so long as his own mood was genial, but who when his temper was ruffled, as Maud put it, like the heathen raged. Still a parent and father is parent and father. The foundation tenet to all known ethics in the family relation as Selina was familiar with them, that of unquestioning obedience to the man of the household, was being repudiated, and this by seemingly crushable little Juliette."I've talked college ever since our junior year at the high school," she here reminded Selina.She had. Juliette had a northern cousin in Ohio whose letters to her began to be dated from such an institution that same year. There were several college-graduate women in their own community, too, figures upon whom Juliette and the rest of them had gazed, awed. And about whom they mutually confessed to find, a certain carriage and a definite assurance, a look and manner more common to busymen, of those having business to attend to and the will and the ability to do it.But who had dreamed that seeds so chance as these could have sown themselves in little Juliette's breast to become the dominant possession of that wee abode?Little? Wee? Volatile? Crushable?It was as if Juliette there on her ottoman vigorously using her pocket handkerchief to stay the still welling tears, thus read these oft-repeated and disqualifying diminutives applied to her in Selina's mind."All of you, in the family and out of it, always infuriate me by fixing the measure of my ability by the size of my body!" The crimson of her fury rushed to her cheeks afresh. "When I read my graduating essay as an honor girl, nobody gave me any credit for having got the honor, whereas everybody clapped and said how cute and that sort of thing."It was so. It had seemed a joke, little Juliette with her crimson cheeks and her unfurled essay. "Judy, poor Judy," murmured Selina, aghast the more at these revelations from this friend she had thought she knew."You went to teaching," Juliette was continuing, "and that made me think on my part. Then you went South, getting about your business in life as you saw it, and at that I up and told Papa what I wanted. He treated it as a huge joke on my part, chucked me under the chin, I always have loathedhis doing that at any time, and said for perpetrating it he'd give me a box at the minstrels and I could ask my friends. He actually did say that, Selina. And when I persisted that it wasn't a joke, that I'd made up my mind I wanted to go to college, and sooner or later was going, he was incredulous at first, and then flew into a rage and told me I was a little fool and there'd been enough of this nonsense, and if I said any more I could go to my room and stay there until I could be sensible. When I took it up the next time and insisted he owed it to me to show me why he felt as he did about a girl going to college, he said he'd show me the only argument he purposed advancing, and took me by my shoulder and marched me up here to my room, and going out slammed the door. I wrote him a note then and sent it to him at the store by mail, saying if he'd show me truly and convincingly, why, I'd give in. He didn't answer, but told Mamma to tell me if there was any more of it, he'd stop the allowance I'd asked for my last birthday.""And all this by yourself, Judy?" from Selina, deploringly. "And I not here near you to help you, nor to comfort you!""I've never touched my allowance since," hotly, "and I don't mean to. That's why I didn't come to Adele's. I didn't have the dress to wear and I wouldn't ask for it. I haven't said another word to him on the subject of college since and I'm not going to. I just went around to Professor Maynard'sboys' school and asked him if he'd take me and get me ready for college, and he said he would. I had some money saved up; you see, both my grandfathers always give us children money at Christmas and birthdays. This was while you were gone, Selina. Mamma and baby were away, staying for a couple of weeks at Grandma's on account of the whooping-cough next door to us, and it made it easier for me to manage.""Judy! And you had the courage! You little—well youarea little thing, and Ihaveto say it. Algy told me something about it, told me that you were being coached but didn't want anything said about it.""Algy helped me plan it. His father quarreled with him because hewouldn'tgo to college. It's the same sort of principle. He was sent to Professor Maynard's to be made ready and wouldn't stay. That's how I came to go there. Algy told me about him."Algy! The butt of their fond joking and laughter! Truly, as Selina had said to herself along other lines, you never can tell! "And what happened next, Judy?""When Mamma came back from Grandma's, she began questioning, and I had to tell her. And of course Papa found out then. And because he's a stubbornly limited person, Oh, I'm going to say it, I've thought it long before this especial trouble between us—he thinks, for instance, that horriblebisque cupid in our parlor is the cutest thing in the house—Selina, my life and my wants are to be lopped off to his. I'm not going to stand it. I'm going to college somehow, you hear me now, Selina. I daresay it's his own stubbornness cropping out in me, but that doesn't deter me either. I've a right to my own life, and I'm going if planning can get me there."But at least she disliked the bisque cupid! There was comfort in knowing that!CHAPTER TWENTY-THREEWith Juliette avowedly rebellious, and Adele confessedly the square peg in the round hole, Selina when she said good-bye at the Caldwell's, went in the Addison house next door to get some comfort from Maud.It was the middle of the morning, and Mrs. Addison, a big wholesome-looking, capable personage, was overseeing the hanging of fresh lace curtains in the parlors. She sent Selina on up to Maud's room, after, like Mrs. Caldwell, a plain-spoken word."Now that Maud's through with the novelty of refitting her room, though I saw nothing wrong with it before, she's gone back into complaining discontent again. What's the matter with you all, Selina?""I'm wondering myself, Mrs. Addison," said Selina truthfully.She went on up. Maud was clearing the litter from a big deal table that certainly did not add anything to the looks of her room with its new blue carpet and blue paper and ruffled curtains and its still a-wee-bit-envied cottage furniture. Maud was going in for china painting right now and kept herequipment on the deal table. She exhibited the pitcher of a tea-set of three pieces."Maud was going in for china painting.""There's nothing to it, Selina; painting pink butterflies on a blue background doesn't satisfy one bit. In my heart, and you know it and I know it, too, I don't care a rap for decorated china tea-sets."It was Maud's third essay into the arts since leavingschool eighteen months ago. She had tried with two successive teachers to manufacture a voice which was not there, and also had taken a course in Kensington embroidery. A cover of blue felt cloth, done in drab cat-tails was on her reading-table now."I've just been over with Juliette," Selina explained."At least she knows what she does want, and that's a good deal," from Maud."She hates the bisque cupid as much as we do," Selina hastened to relate, "and hasn't said so. It's taken this last to make her disloyal.""Maybe she hates herself at three on the rose-bank, too," surmised Maud. "Tell Adele and it'll cheer her. Algy's so hot over the treatment of Juliette at home, he goes around every single day to see her.""And we didn't half take up his row that time when he wouldn't go to college. I'd almost forgotten till Juliette reminded me. Have you ever thought what a real dear Algy's always been? We haven't half estimated him? When persons do and do for you, you come to take it for granted? Think how we've always called on Algy?""I suppose," said Maud to this reflectively, as she stood at the washstand rinsing her hands of their paint stains, "we're all fools to some other intelligence. Algy's seemed slower than the rest of us. And now I want to read you a note from Mr. Welling showing whereheputsme. As I just said, meaningmyself as well as Algy, we're all fools to some other intelligence. Of course, Mr. Welling is older and has had college and has been about, but still it's trying. And I've been so altogether complacent, imagining he was getting value received in his visits round here, reading German with me, and all. Maybe he has been getting it in a sense I hadn't reckoned on," bitterly. "He asked me the other night, Selina, in that jocular way of his that one ought always to distrust, if I had read the editorial in the morning paper on our new democratic president's first message. I hadn't. I didn't know there was a message, and I knew I wasn't a bit bright as to just what a president's message is supposed to be. I had to formulate some sort of position though, and so as I went along, I said no, I never read the papers much, that Mamma glanced over the deaths and headlines and reported them while Papa ate his breakfast, and then Papa went off with the paper in his pocket. And I added that we were on the other side anyhow, that the Addisons had been Unionists, and were with the republican interests ever since.""I know," said Selina hastily, this being the one thing about Maud and her family always hard to get around, and therefore a matter to refrain from dwelling on as far as possible."'Mr. Welling looked at me in that ... quizzing way of his.'"Maud was continuing: "Mr. Welling looked at me in that prolonged, considering, quizzing way of his, his spectacles somehow always seeming to intensify the effect, you know what I mean, and with his lips pursed as if he were having a jolly good time for some unseen reason. He generally is when he looks that way, and at somebody else's expense, too. I hurried to add that of course I supposed I ought to show more interest in questions of the day and that perhaps I would if the papers were ever at hand around the house.""I never read them much myself," agreed Selina, "except when something comes up that I hear Papa and Culpepper talking to each other about. Then I try to remember to look it up.""Well, listen now to what followed. We're only highly diverting and amusing to 'em, Selina. This morning I received notices by mail of subscriptions in my name to two papers, one local and one not, and a note from Mr. Welling. Listen to it, Selina, and then you'll know what they think of us. He's laughing at me from the very start to the finish.""My dear Miss Maud:"I am going to hope that you will read the editorials in these two papers every day. It is unnecessary to say I have no sinister object in view such as putting that in your way which might influence you adversely to the political faith you say you have elected to move in. It is rather because I consider that newspapers typify the most virile and living English of our day, as well as embody the history of our own times, and for these reasons as well as for their perforce certain amount of incisive logic, are a means of disciplining and cultivating the mind. Such articles as appear in a reputable paper's editorial columns, not now and then, but in every issue of every first rate daily, will gradually effect an undisciplined reader, and cause her to form by absorption—"Maud lowered the sheet of close-written paper and looked over at Selina. An indignant color glowed in her face. "You notice he restricts himself to the one pronoun, Selina, 'and cause her to form by absorption—— '""I did notice," agreed Selina unwillingly."Wait till you hear the whole of it," Maud lifted the pages and resumed:—"will gradually effect an undisciplined reader, and cause her to form by absorption, habits of logical contemplation and discussion which eventually will enable her to discern the salient points and the related elements of a question, than which there is no greater conscious pleasure. And when she arrives at that stage of development, to say what she means instead of gradually finding out (?)—"Again Maud lowered the page."There's a question mark in parenthesis after the 'finding out,' I ought to tell you, Selina. He was afraid the implication might escape me. Well, if he's amused, I suppose we ought to be willing to supply it to him."She resumed:"—to say what she means instead of gradually finding out (?) what she means from what she says. I take it that intelligent thinking requires as much mental discipline as military action requires physical discipline. I trust you will not consider it anoblesse obligeto read the tariff articles too, though their disciplining effect would also be excellent. But if it requires any grinding, I beg of you to be certain you are acquitted of any obligation in this direction, resting upon the claim of so virulent a disciple to free trade as myself, suggesting it."Maud flung the several pages down, and faced Selina. "There! Certainly you can see that he's laughing at me! What else can you make of it? And that's what they really think of us, Selina, andour attainments we rather flattered ourselves over.""It—er—shows trouble he's taken, too," from Selina weakly and as she felt as she said it, without conviction."It shows an abysmal depth of pity, not to say hilarity with the pity," gloomily."Maud," from Selina with reluctance and hesitation, "what's free trade that he says he's such a virulent disciple of? Has it to do with the—er—tariff?""That's the trouble," bitterly. "I don't know."CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURAmanthus stopped by one afternoon a week later, to see Selina. If Adele was entirely occupied in going to luncheons, dinners and cotillions, where she did not shine, so that Selina saw little of her, Amanthus was equally occupied in going to these same affairs, where she did shine, and Selina saw less of her.She was returning from a luncheon now, lovely child, and a fawn-colored hat set off her hair and face, and a fawn-colored wrap enveloped her. She had come by with a message."But first I ought to say, Mr. Verily Blanke and Mr. Doe sent back polite messages. I haven't seen you since the day Mamma and I spent with them at my uncle's stock-farm. They're going out as far as California while they're in this country, stopping everywhere, and up into Canada. They don't go back to England before next summer. If Mamma and I go east to her cousin's summer place, we'll see them again at Bar Harbor. And, Selina, Mr. Doe says everybody in London, to the plainest and the ugliest, even the princesses royal, have bangs. He wasn't talking about horses as I thought at first, butabout people. Mamma says bangs are copied from a doubtful person, an actress, and she's not sure she wants to see me have them. And that brings me to what I came for. And first, may I go out to the mirror in the hat-tree and fix my hat on better? It feels crooked and I'm going from here to pay a party call."She went out to the glass and talked back from this point as she resettled her hat. "Mamma is trying this new thing, of serving tea in the afternoon, as perhaps you know, Selina. She thought my coming-out winter was a good time to begin it. It was while you were away we started it, and she wants you and Maud and Juliette and Adele to come for a cup to-morrow."Selina very ardently adored Mrs. Harrison and an invitation from her was a privilege."There's sure to be some men drop by, too, now it's getting to be understood about it," explained Amanthus coming back into the parlor, "your Mr. Tate, for one," as though this person in kind were a creature entirely peculiar to Selina's world and unclassified in hers, "ever since we asked him to our dance in fact. Lately Mr. Welling and Mr. Cannon and Culpepper have been coming, too, as if they do it to plague him. He told them real testily, the last time, he wished they would not follow him around.""That's why they do it," said Selina, even while she was adapting herself to this new and surprisingviewpoint of Culpepper and his group, habitués at Mrs. Harrison's!Amanthus rather unexpectedly resented this imputation on Mr. Tate. She replied almost sharply, "I like Mr. Tate myself, though I suppose he comes more to see Mamma. He talks to me about the Caesars and the Atlantic cable and Garfield. You think I don't know how the rest of you, Maud and every one of you, change the subject when I come and talk down to me, but I do."True enough, every word of this indictment! And true also that Mr. Tate did talk to Amanthus and Amanthus was pleased that he should."Shall I tell Mamma you'll come, Selina?""Oh, always, Amanthus, you know I'd never decline a chance to be where your mother is."The next afternoon, Selina went downstairs in best dress, coat, hat and gloves, to join Adele come by for her and waiting on the doorstep outside in velvet coat, velvet hat and furs against a background of early dusk and spitting snow. As they neared the Harrison house at the other end of the block, a brick dwelling with a slate mansard, sitting high in its trim corner yard, they saw Maud and Juliette on the steps. Maud in hunter's green, and Juliette still wan of cheek, but as if a bit defiantly, tricked out in brave scarlet. Hurrying they joined the two as Hetty, the maid, opened the door."They found Mrs. Harrison ... before the open fire."Ushered in they found Mrs. Harrison in the second of the two parlors in a big and comfortable chair before the open fire. They loved her fair hair drawn in water waves about her brow and temples; they loved her flowing apricot-toned cashmere with its fichu and hand ruffles and its touches of blue; they loved her fine and frankly beautiful face.They long had known her story, too, from their elders. A rich girl, raised by her uncle, owner of the Selimcroft stock-farm, she had married a man considerably her senior, a person of charm and much social note, who bringing her here to this community, had wasted her property in shocking fashion in his own behalf, and practiced economy almost to scandal upon her. Since his death when Amanthus was a bit of thing, she had managed the wreck of her affairs herself, prudently and thriftily, bringing herself and her child to where they were.Mrs. Harrison laid her book on the table by her as the group came in. She, without being aware of it, was advocate and sponsor for much of their present reading, a recently heard of English writer, one Hardy, being the latest met with at her hands, she claiming for him a new departure in heroines. "A Pair of Blue Eyes," was the volume she was laying down now, as their quick eyes saw. By the end of the week, some one of them would have secured it from the circulating library, and the four would have read it, too. In what way were these heroines of this Hardy new in departure? Just what did Mrs. Harrison mean? Was Hardy defending them in their types because they were what the world had madethem? These were the questions the four asked each other after reading each volume."Well, my dears! Let Hetty have your wraps and come and join me. Amanthus is the victim of her own pertinacity. I gave in at last this morning and agreed she might go down to Miss Lucy at the hair-store and have her hair shingled into a bang. With every one of you now snipping surreptitiously at her hair more and more each day—yes, you well may blush, Maud, you bear the proofs upon you—we opposing elders may as well give in and let you have your bangs. The deed being done, Amanthus had to rush downtown again this afternoon with Mary, the upstairs maid, carrying band-boxes, every hat she owns proving too big in the crown from this cropped arrangement. She'll be in presently. I'm glad to have you to myself this bit."They came flocking back after depositing their coats, and found seats about the fire as near to her as might be. They loved her hands which were white and shapely and well cared for. They loved her generous comprehendings and her unfailing appreciations. They knew, for example, that she already would have noted and with pleasure in the noting, that Adele's new ruche was becoming, that Maud was wearing her first man-tailored suit, that Juliette's scarlet box-coat just removed, was fetching, that Selina in her cashmere that was open a bit at the throat, had lowered her abundant hair to a Langtry knot at the nape of her pretty neck, if her motherwouldn't let her have a Langtry bang over her forehead."Amanthus told Selina we talk down to her, Mrs. Harrison," burst forth little Juliette. "Though I can't see why, with her dozen to our one of every sort of thing, she should care. We felt we'd have to tell you.""That I might absolve you?" smiled Mrs. Harrison. "Amanthus is a dear goose, a very dear but palpable goose."Did this lovely lady with the sweet and even pityingly tender eyes pause here, as with one deliberating, and in resuming, speak as to a seen end? Or was she by chance a Medea sowing dragon's teeth for these of her own sex from which should spring the discontents of the future?"Amanthus is a dear goose," slowly, "but has it occurred to you alert young people, that so long as things are as they are for us women, so long as our only avenue to place and establishment continues to be through marriage, Amanthus is the enviable one among us, the one forever safe and contentedly sweet and insured within the confines of her own docility and femininity, the one that will never rebel, the one that will never ask why? And that as things are as they are, we perhaps should be the more rejoiced to have Amanthus as she is.""So long as things are as they are?" "So long as our only avenue to place and establishment continues to be through marriage?"This group of four young people looked at Mrs. Harrison startled, and as though not sure they quite were getting her meaning.The outer door was heard to open and close, and Amanthus quite literally blew in, snow-sprinkled and wind-tossed, Amanthus who brought into dim rooms the golden effulgence of youth and radiance and beauty, Amanthus, the forever safe and contentedly sweet and insured.She tossed off her big, softly plumed beaver hat, and behold, she was shingled to her yellow crown! But also, she was in despair."Mamma—girls, I'm so glad to see you—I was reading the fashion-paper I bought on the way, while I waited at the milliner's. It's too discouraging. It says Queen Victoria has tabooed bangs. What sort do you suppose tabooed bangs are? The latest thing I suppose! And here, just to-day, I've had mine shingled into Langtry ones!""And yet," said Mrs. Harrison laughing, even if tenderly, and drawing Amanthus down to her and kissing her, the while she gave a look all whimsical to the others across the yellow-head, "and yet, in the name of every one of us, why would we have her one whit different?"What did Mrs. Harrison mean? Why was she thus including them and not Amanthus in these implications and indictments? The four looked at each other, non-plussed and wondering, and for some reason just the least bit disturbed.CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVEHere Mr. Tate was shown in by Hetty. He was exceedingly tall and his cheek-bones were prominent, and so was his earnestness. His skirted coat seemed ponderous and so did he.Maud, for one, never had cared for Mr. Tate, possibly because he seemed so little aware of her. She was in a gloomy frame of mind anyway, not having cheered up since, so she put it, she'd seen herself as Mr. Welling and his sex saw her. She said afterwards, that this afternoon at the Harrisons only confirmed the point of view. Mr. Tate in his frock coat and his earnestness seemed to provide an outlet for her immediate ill-humor."When a person's dressed with all that excess of correctness, he only looks ridiculous," she told Selina, by whom she was sitting.Amanthus apparently did not think so. She smiled for Mr. Tate and that marvel of a dimple showed and she gave him her soft hand. Mrs. Harrison smiled for him, too, and offered a hand and told him that she and Amanthus had enjoyed his matinée tickets hugely."He's never offered us matinée tickets," sottovoce from Maud at Selina's elbow. "That earnestness of his keeps its eye on exactly what it wants and doesn't waste itself elsewhere. He's recognizing we're here now and he's coming to tell us so. That's something to be grateful for."He shook hands with Adele and called her Miss Adelina. She and her identity always seemed vague to him. He shook hands with Selina and asked her about her mother and her aunt; he shook hands with Juliette. He came to Maud. Her attitude to him at times savored of belligerency. She wasn't fond of persons who ignored her, but as she explained afterward, she hardly had flattered herself he'd noticed this manner."Miss Maud," Mr. Tate having said this in recognition of her as he put out his hand, paused, then said the name over again as if struck for the first time with the sound and significance of it. "MissMaud?" consideringly and reflectively. "There's something then in names? Juliette now," with a beneficent wave of the hand in the direction of that pretty, dark, little person, "diminutive of Julia; Amanda, Amanthus, and the further derivatives," he turned and bowed gallantly in the direction of this young lady, "worthy to be loved—Matilda, Matilde, Maud—mighty battle maid."Perhaps it was fortunate that Hetty came in here, this time ushering Mr. Welling, Mr. Cannon and Culpepper. They seemed to bring in with them the bracing of the outside cold and something of its vigoras to a man they rallied about their hostess, their spirits effervescent."We had your note," from Mr. Cannon, the good-looking and the debonaire, cheerfully."We've primed ourselves with the law on the subject of cook-ladies and their husbands and their wages," from Culpepper genially."We were pricking Tate, old man, into coming this afternoon anyway, before we heard from you, to give us an excuse for following him," from Mr. Welling."Tate's been right testy because you asked us instead of him for that advice. He prefers to think the whole lien on things around here is his," from Mr. Cannon.They came about the room now shaking hands generally."You here, Selina? That's good," from Culpepper."And you won't forgive me, Miss Maud?" from Mr. Welling to this energetically handsome young lady in her cloth suit of hunter's green. "Won't believe me that my motives, far from trying to win you over to my democracy, were unmixed and pure? Wouldn't see me when I called the other evening! Haven't answered my pleading note! I appeal to you, Mrs. Harrison. I've a question in ethics, moral, social and otherwise that Miss Amanthus once told me about. Or perhaps I'd better put it direct to Miss Maud.Will a lady say she's out whenshe's in?I'm coming around again to satisfy myself as to this, to-morrow night."And meanwhile did Mr. Cannon—perish the thought!—approximate a wink at Adele as he approached her? At Adele who when she used to sportively skip rope did it with such painful conscientiousness one's heart ached to watch her? At Adele who constitutionally would be so embarrassed with a wink thus placed on her hands, one could not figure out the consequences? Certainly this Mr. Preston Cannon the naughty did something with an eyelid quite confidentially as he reached her. And who pray had told him of his recent double identity in connection with the Carter reception?"The vagabond interloper is discovered in the cherished nephew," he was saying jocularly to Adele whose face was scarlet.But even so, despite this effervescence of good spirits bestowed around, the younger ladies could not deceive themselves. The gentlemen were glad to find them here, of course, but incidentally, their own coming and their own ardor being for Mrs. Harrison!For the third time Hetty appeared, now bringing in the tea and its accompaniments, which she put down on a table before Mrs. Harrison.Whereupon the gentlemen rallied to their hostess again, rallied with a zest and heartiness that spelled homage. Culpepper at the table by her elbow, with the silver tongs suspended above the silver sugar bowl, waited her word to distribute the cubes tosaucers. Culpepper—the blunt and self-avowed scorner of the lady's man!Mr. Welling went about carrying cups. According to Maud's undertones to Selina, his facetious speeches as he distributed these merely sounded excessive."And silly," she added a moment later to the first indictment.It was his speech calling attention to the gracious occupation of the hostess at the tea-table, that provoked this last comment."Juno, to human needs sweetly descent, pours tea," Mr. Welling diagramed it, as he handed Maud a cup of the brew."He mails mental pabulum to me, and bestows compliments elsewhere," she remarked scathingly as he moved on.Amanthus, artless sight, her shingled yellow bang altogether fetching, followed in the wake of Mr. Welling, with cakes in a silver basket. He called back gallantly over his shoulder diagraming her, too."Hebe to the children of earth," he explained.It was nauseating, that is if one agreed with Maud.Mr. Tate followed after the cups and the cakes with lemon and with cream. It was a risk to let him. He earnestly and even decorously stumbled over a rug and slopped the cream, and as earnestly and decorously looked annoyed and recovered himself. He also made rejoinder to Mr. Welling."Juno and Hebe, if you will, Henry," he was theonly known soul apparently who addressed this gentleman by his Christian name, "except that in both cases, our Juno and our Hebe are first and last and always, radiantly and commendably, woman!""He ... stumbled over a rug and slopped the cream."Selina who earlier in the afternoon felt she was looking her best in her cashmere with its open throat and the knot of her hair at the nape of her neck, butwas less fondly hopeful about it now, took her tea from Mr. Welling, her cake from Amanthus, her cream from Mr. Tate, but something of her state of mind from Maud.She did not care for tea. If the truth be told, while she was a little sensitive about the childish look of the thing, a goblet of milk still stood at her plate three times a day, Mamma discouraging even a tentative cup of coffee at breakfast. But it was not her lack of ardor for the tea now in her hand which was dampening her spirits, but the realization that she and her companions were but incidents to a foreground adequately filled for these young gentlemen.A foreground not even shared by Amanthus, but filled altogether by Mrs. Harrison, beautiful, smiling, and serene, too big, too adequate, too honest and too real to put forward one charm, one attribute deliberately to invite such recognition.Too big, too honest and too real? Selina caught at the words as they passed through her mind. Could the secret lie in these? Auntie had deplored the borrowed furbelows with deep distress. Were she and her group paying the penalty of trying to be what they were not?These young gentlemen whose good opinions the group yearned to possess, bantered them instead with jocularity, and gave sincerity and admiration to Mrs. Harrison. If Selina could judge, it was the same nature of homage men offered to Miss PocahontasBoswell, that most natural and unassuming of persons.Had Selina laid bare the secret? For was not Mrs. Harrison nobly and simply herself? Each charm and each loveliness taking its toll rightfully her own? And her interests and her occupations and her reading, her assumptions and her opinions, were not these too gently and quietly her own?She had faced about from the tea-table now, her own cup in hand and was speaking. How lovely her fair hair was, how pleasing the apricot tones of her dress! And Mamma and Auntie said there was no degradation a husband might descend to that her money was not taken to pay for, no price a humiliated young wife could be taxed, her personal fortune did not stand voucher for! Why should a woman permit it? Why not consider her own to be her own, in such a case? Selina, looking at Mrs. Harrison, wondered.She herself was speaking. "And now about old colored Aunt Hosanna in my kitchen. She has a lazy, ne'er-do-well husband, girls, though I've probably mentioned it before to you, who as regularly as the week-end rolls around, appears and collects her week's wages for her. I have asked to be assured by these young lawyers-to-be, that he has every right to do it, before I give in to him any longer.""He has every right," from Mr. Welling, square-set now like his spectacles, and earnest and definite. "The common law, covering the law of husband andwife, has been modified in some of the states, but here in our own, is practically unchanged.""Culpepper," from Mrs. Harrison still playing with her tea-cup, to this black-haired, blue-eyed young gentleman in a chair to her left, "you promised to look up the case of that little dressmaker for me. Don't think I hunt these things. By some force of attraction seemingly, they seek me."Culpepper took advantage of the opportunity to put his cup down. Its undiminished contents would indicate that he didn't care for tea as a beverage either. He, too, was business-like and definite."I took the address you gave me," he said, "and went around to see her carpenter husband. She's temporarily left him since you saw her. He admits the house was bought and paid for by her out of her earnings before he knew her. And he admits he mistreats her every time he's drunk. But the house and its contents he proposes to keep if she leaves him.""She lost three sewing-machines once before," said Mrs. Harrison, "and a piano she'd bought by installments that was the joy and pride of her life. They were seized a week after she married him three years ago to settle debts he had contracted before he knew her."Mr. Cannon came into the conversation. Nor was he in the least the jollying, bandying person the younger ladies were familiar with."Which is proof of where he on his part puts us, too," murmured Maud."You women, Mrs. Harrison, so seldom take the protection offered you in the ante-nuptial or marriage settlement provisions. We've just been remarking on it among ourselves, the rich women seldom, the working-woman never."Mrs. Harrison played with the spoon in her saucer, as if considering before answering. She had been holding her cup now for some time."Put it down," said Mr. Welling from his stand near the fender, persuasively; "you haven't tasted it.""No more have you yours," retorted his hostess, "nor Selina, nor Maud, nor Culpepper nor Juliette—I don't like tea myself, and I don't believe one of the rest of you do."There was relaxation at this, and general confession, and a setting down of cups."Tea as a function is more popular than tea as a beverage," from Mr. Welling, gallantly.Mrs. Harrison reached for her tatting which lay near her book. "You say, Mr. Cannon, you wonder women so seldom take advantage of the marriage settlement provisions?" Her eyes glancing from one to the other of the young girls grouped about her fireside and then returning to Mr. Cannon seemed to say, "Here are cases in possible point to be. Consider them."What she said, however, was, "How many young girls, even in the class you know, are likely to haveheard of an ante-nuptial provision? Or as things go in our American life, would conceive any need of protection in her own case? American women usually marry for affection, which implies faith. Though the real truth is, we're not apt to think about marriage in any sense such as this at all, having been trained neither to the knowledge nor the thinking. I take it, Mr. Cannon," smiling, "that you will make it your business to instruct the young lady of your choice in these points beforehand?"Mr. Cannon laughed, but he got red, too.Was Mrs. Harrison too honest thus to be sowing insubordination in the camps of the possible future and not acknowledge it? She put her tatting down."I am not attacking the institution of marriage in the least, Maudie and Juliette, Selina, Adele and my Amanthus. I am not attacking it at all; I am repudiating woman's helplessness within the institution. Adele knows more of what I am talking about, I see it in her eyes. Adele is a browser among books.""Mills on 'The Subjection of Woman,'" murmured Mr. Cannon still red. "This my defence. I lent it to her."Hetty appeared again, this time ushering Bliss and Mr. Tuttle Jones."Oh," from Amanthus, "ifyou knew how glad I am to see you both. They've been talking and talking, and are still talking, and I haven't been able to make out one thing of what they think they're talking about."Bliss ruddy-haired and pretty boy, hurried to her side, his face alight at the welcome. Bliss was twenty-one now, and his father had given him a wee interest in a box factory, and he was up and gone from home by half-past six in the mornings, and was tremendously proud and in earnest and interested, and very much in love with Amanthus.Mr. Jones, his neat person and neat features and small moustache immaculate, finished his greetings without a shade of hurry, then made his way to Selina. Maud had wandered away now, and he took the place she had vacated. Whereupon the color began to rise in Selina's cheek, warm and permeating, and rich. For the eyes of Mr. Jones were sweeping over her face, her brow, her hair, even to the pale burnished knot at the nape of her neck, and sweeping back again over the whole. There were other masculine eyes that might have been doing the same that had declined their prerogative."I knew the style was yours when I asked you to try it" murmured Tuttle.The color flamed higher."Mamma and I had cards to-day from your sister, Mrs. Sampson, for her next afternoon. It was nice of her to think of us," from Selina.Selina and her mother did not know Mrs. Sampson."Promise me to accept and go," from Tuttle, earnestly. "A real promise I want. Exactly. Now Ihave it. I want you to know my people better, and my people to know you."What could the color do at a speech such as this, but wave almost painfully, higher and even higher?"Oh, I must tell you, by the way, your aunt, Mrs. Bruce came in the bank to-day to see me. She fancies she owes me some sort of thanks about her husband, which, of course, she doesn't at all. That off her mind, she asked me if I could give her any reasonable idea of how many women in town had a vault box, or if I could tell her how to find out how many have bank-books. What do you suppose?"Selina had a nice voice, clear and sweet and when she was happy and merry, full of cadences. It rang silvery in its notes now. "I don't suppose. Nobody does when it's Aunt Juanita. Mamma says she's been hunting information of various kinds about women for fifteen years."It was such a wonderfully pleasing thing to hear that silvery laugh, Tuttle Jones set about awakening it again.*******About the time cloaks were being sought, Culpepper came strolling to hunt Selina."I'll walk back with you," he said easily.We're all pitiable and ignoble, which is to say, human creatures. If Selina had admitted the slightest feeling of chagrin earlier in the evening, that feeling found satisfaction now. Moreover, she was looking that very best of hers again, which meansshe was sparkling and coloring and laughing, a thing calculated to increase one's satisfaction. She gave Culpepper a share of this sparkle and this color as she replied:"Mr. Jones is going to take me home, thank you, Culpepper. He says it's quite dark and snowing fast."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONEIt was a gratifying entry that finally was made at the Carters, Uncle Bruce ultimately being pacified and left at home in the care of the English servant, and Mr. Jones, after meeting the guests and hearing the program for the evening, glancing across at Selina in her white net dress and evening cape, and asking to go along.Papa and Mamma were justly proud of their guests, pre-eminently the older one. And Mr. Roswell Carter was equally and as sincerely gratified to find them his guests. He asked Papa to arrange with Uncle Bruce that he be privileged to have a dinner followed by a smoker at the club that the men of the community be given the opportunity to meet the gentlemen. And Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle coming sailing up in all her splendor to Papa and Mamma and the distinguished strangers, asked to be permitted to arrange for a dinner party on the next evening.But while these staid elders were doing the honors thus to the guests from the old world over in the more sedate library, Selina was feeling the thrill and the importance of her entrance into the embowered parlors with Mr. Tuttle Jones.Adele in an even overly-modish dress which sat uneasily upon her, dear Adele with her conscientious face and her serious eyes, stood between her mother and her grandmother, a seeming shrine of palms and floral decorations for background.Selina deep in her heart was proud of the casual manner with which she came up and presented Mr. Jones. There was no question of his welcome being assured. Mrs. Grosvenor, elaborate as to hair and impressive gown, smiled graciously upon this sought-after young man, and anticipating her daughter, spoke first: "It is very lovely in you to challenge our leniency as you put it, Mr. Jones, and come over with Selina. She is like a second daughter in our house, I may say, she and Adele, my granddaughter, being inseparable. Adele, have you spoken to Mr. Jones?"Mrs. Carter, also elaborate as to gown and hair, was equally affable: "Charming old Mrs. Jinnie Cumming has given us the pleasure of having her with us this evening. It is inevitable she is going to demand you come and speak to her? Shall I anticipate and take you to her? My duties to arriving guests seem to be about over. Mrs. Cumming claims to have waived formality, too, and has brought a drolly delightful nephew with her, a recent comer in the city."And Mrs. Carter laid a hand on the arm of Mr. Jones and carried him off, Mrs. Grosvenor turned to bespeak a possible next guest if there be one, andAdele sometimes surprisingly dry-spoken for a girl of eighteen, laid her hand on Selina's gloved arm."Unfortunately that's just like Mamma, overlooking the fact he was your escort because she wanted him then herself. And who do you suppose the droll nephew is that Mrs. Jinnie Cumming brought with her? The humor of it's helped me bear up under this ridiculous dress. I must look like an irresponsible in its spangles, don't I, Selina, for I feel like one?""It's really a wonderful dress, Adele. Who's the droll nephew?""Our Mr. Cannon that Mamma wouldn't let me ask here to the reception to-night. I was perfectly hateful and threw it up to her a bit ago."Did Adele here look away and her cheek grow pink with rare color? Was she pleased that it should be Mr. Cannon?With a change of tone she spoke again. "Juliette wouldn't come at the last moment. Selina, she's unhappy, and I think we ought to tell you so. It happened while you were gone." Again with a change of tone: "Did you ever see anything so lovely as Amanthus and so entrancing?""Our Mr. Doe thinks so," said Selina. "Witness, please."Across the hall in the open doorway of the library stood Mr. Cyril Doe, the secretary, endeavoring to fit a glass into his eye with all the awkwardness ofone about to lose an arm or a leg or two from sheer inability to hold on to them."Endeavoring to fit a glass into his eye.""Did you ever before see a monocle except on the stage, Selina? In 'Lord Dundreary' and that sort of thing? I never have," from Adele. "And the truly wonderful grimaces he's making getting it to stay! It's sort of horribly fascinating to see if he'sgoing to succeed. There, it's done, and what's it in place to gaze on?"And following the undoubted line of Mr. Doe's vision, as indicated by Selina, Adele came to Amanthus near the embowered newell post, a dozen feet away from the library doorway.Amanthus! Dimpling for three callow youths surrounding her. Amanthus of the laughing eyes, the laughing cheeks, the laughing lips, Amanthus of the sunny hair and violet gaze, who laughed, as now, as the flowers blow, nor knew why more than they! Amanthus, supple and young and enchanting, in floating clouds of gauzy yellow, a wreath of buds upon her daffodil hair, and slender slippers of daffodil gold upon her buoyant feet! Maud stood near her talking to some other callow youth, handsome enough in her white tarlatan dress with glossy green leaves and their berries in her red-brown hair, and young and vital, too, but not for Mr. Cyril Doe. It was upon that vision known to earth as Amanthus this monocled, British, chinless person was gazing."And Mr. Jones, after declining our party, came with you, Selina," from Adele. "We'll be regarding you as another Amanthus."Selina arched her pretty throat, then remembered to be modest. It was hard not to be complacent about it just a bit, the more so that Mr. Jones having shaken loose from Mrs. Carter, here was seen making his way through the crowded parlors backto her. But at least if she was not so really modest as she could wish about it, she could dissemble."Adele, look out in the hall again," thus she sought to put the matter aside. "Mr. Doe has found Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle, and she is taking him to Amanthus."The next day Maud spoke accusingly to Selina. One rarely deceived Maud. "Don't be self-deceiving about it. Don't be too scathing of Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Grosvenor. Look into your own heart first, if you please, Selina. You were the more elated over taking Mr. Jones than over any of the rest of it, yourself, and you needn't tell me, for one, you weren't! The big frog in the home pool means more to the little frogs than the big fish from strange waters. I suppose I'd have been, too."The evening of this same day Selina told Culpepper of Maud's accusation. Papa and Mamma, Uncle Bruce and the guests were gone to Mrs. Tuttle's dinner party, and Culpepper on request had come round to spend the evening with her and Auntie. It was a comfort thus to have him in the family, making it possible to ask such things of him, and to talk to him about quite personal matters. He and she were in the parlor before the flickering fire and the burnished brasses, and Auntie in the next room was playing her evening game of Napoleon solitaire on the dining-table."Maud didn't quite say I was an incipient snob, Culpepper," Selina commented after telling him thestory of the whole evening, the rescue of Uncle Bruce by Mr. Jones included. "She didn't actually say I was as despicable as that, but she implied it." Selina flushed and grew even a little more thoughtful. "And the truth of it is, Culpepper, I had to admit to Maud her accusation in a sense is true. I was elated over taking Mr. Jones. But Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Grosvenor could not have been made to acknowledge on any less worldly grounds the something I had come to recognize as necessary to my Wistar self-respect, and especially if I were to continue going with Adele. I've been thinking it over and I'm right about this. But there's worse! I flaunted my new evening cape and was complacent over it. I even felt myself pitying Mamma and feeling cross toward her about her old scarf. Whereas if I come down to facts, Cousin Anna's money which I still owe her, went to replace that used to buy the cape and some other things. It isn't the actual cape I'm meaning, though, nor the literal episode of taking Mr. Jones to the Carter's, Culpepper? Of course you know that? What I'm worrying over is what Maud calls 'the principle back of the thing.' I'm not one bit pleased with what I see in myself that way. Do we go on forever climbing three feet out of the well by day, and falling back two feet by night? Will I ever get anywhere?"The iliad of her little woes, piteously assailing those walls of half-knowledge shutting her out from her mede of common-sense and common understanding!The odyssey of her little wanderings following half-truths, misled by platitudes, failing ever of the haven of truth where she would be! Alas for you, Mamma and Auntie, who with all your yearnings over her, have so pitifully equipped your one ewe lamb for life!Culpepper the while Selina talked, thus guileless of her guilelessness, thus innocent of her innocence, had been gazing at her across the space of the hearth between them, his eyes upon her, but following thoughts of his own. He came to himself with a start.Now that she, this pretty girl here before the fire with him in this intimate aloofness, was growing up, tall and fair, that crown of pale, shining hair distinguishing her, it came upon him at times such as now, with a clutch, a catching of his breath, to have her still so ingenuously sweet, still so honest, still so utterly and so endearingly confiding. It disarmed him. It broke down his control. It got into that blatant blood of his and for moments made him see red and feel afraid for himself. He wanted to seize her hands there in her lap, and kiss their helpless palms! No, he wanted to seizeherand kissher, kiss her until she awoke to the facts of life and—understood. And this achieved, lay down the mandate to her that he was here, and all the while had been here, for the man-made and Heaven-sanctioned purpose of taking material and every other sort of care of her, the woman. His stepmother knew it, hisCousin Robert knew it, ole Miss, he'd take his oath, more than half suspected it.True, he had nothing whatever of his own, only a princely allowance from that big-souled person, his stepmother. But God Almighty, what of that? He'd have all that he needed having in his own good time. He was the stripe and make that batters any old thing out of the way of the going if it be mistaken enough to get there—the sort, in fact, that succeeds. The baffling thing here was of a different nature, being Selina herself. You can't crush a bud into its bloom by the mere force of your longing; you can't kiss a child that knows no passion, with passion!Culpepper, twenty-three himself, but no less sophisticated than he would be when he was thirty-three, pulled himself together, big, good-looking young giant that he was, the effect of whose bodily presence here was always to further dwarf the shabby little parlor.The soft flip of Auntie's cards being dealt out on the table came from the next room. It was like a restoring touch from her calm personality."One thing is cleared up for me by last night's happenings," declared Culpepper cheerfully."What?" from Selina. She had been thinking how comfy and nice it was, this long chatty evening with him, and the firelight, and the always restful sense of Auntie's proximity."Why, Tuttle, or Tuts, as we of his class at college called him, was in training for a color-sensethose four years, matching suits to socks, and socks to neckties. But for that nicety for color so faithfully attained, where would little Mr. Bruce be right now?"Auntie's voice came in from the next room. "Mr. Jones is a gentleman, and has proved it, Culpepper. I won't have you decrying him.""All right, ole Miss; what you say goes. What we at college kicked about was that he was such a lady.""Culpepper, not another word," from Auntie."Just to ask how much longer the high and mighties, these Britishers, are with us," pleaded Culpepper, "so I'll know when it's safe for me to show up around here in the old way?""One more day only," Selina reassured him, "Mr. Carter's giving them a dinner and smoker at the club to-morrow evening. Mrs. Harrison has arranged for them to stop for a day at Selimcroft, her Uncle's stock-farm up your way, as they go. She discovered that they want to see some of our typical horses and stables and training tracks and such, you'll know just what, better than I do. Mrs. Harrison and Amanthus are going up for the day with them. Amanthus is so impressed by Mr. Doe, the secretary, she's overcome. It hasn't often happened to Amanthus. He told her for some reason or other, that everything that's good form in England just now wears bangs. And she asked him, you know how Amanthus does ask such things, if he meant horses?"

It was a gratifying entry that finally was made at the Carters, Uncle Bruce ultimately being pacified and left at home in the care of the English servant, and Mr. Jones, after meeting the guests and hearing the program for the evening, glancing across at Selina in her white net dress and evening cape, and asking to go along.

Papa and Mamma were justly proud of their guests, pre-eminently the older one. And Mr. Roswell Carter was equally and as sincerely gratified to find them his guests. He asked Papa to arrange with Uncle Bruce that he be privileged to have a dinner followed by a smoker at the club that the men of the community be given the opportunity to meet the gentlemen. And Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle coming sailing up in all her splendor to Papa and Mamma and the distinguished strangers, asked to be permitted to arrange for a dinner party on the next evening.

But while these staid elders were doing the honors thus to the guests from the old world over in the more sedate library, Selina was feeling the thrill and the importance of her entrance into the embowered parlors with Mr. Tuttle Jones.

Adele in an even overly-modish dress which sat uneasily upon her, dear Adele with her conscientious face and her serious eyes, stood between her mother and her grandmother, a seeming shrine of palms and floral decorations for background.

Selina deep in her heart was proud of the casual manner with which she came up and presented Mr. Jones. There was no question of his welcome being assured. Mrs. Grosvenor, elaborate as to hair and impressive gown, smiled graciously upon this sought-after young man, and anticipating her daughter, spoke first: "It is very lovely in you to challenge our leniency as you put it, Mr. Jones, and come over with Selina. She is like a second daughter in our house, I may say, she and Adele, my granddaughter, being inseparable. Adele, have you spoken to Mr. Jones?"

Mrs. Carter, also elaborate as to gown and hair, was equally affable: "Charming old Mrs. Jinnie Cumming has given us the pleasure of having her with us this evening. It is inevitable she is going to demand you come and speak to her? Shall I anticipate and take you to her? My duties to arriving guests seem to be about over. Mrs. Cumming claims to have waived formality, too, and has brought a drolly delightful nephew with her, a recent comer in the city."

And Mrs. Carter laid a hand on the arm of Mr. Jones and carried him off, Mrs. Grosvenor turned to bespeak a possible next guest if there be one, andAdele sometimes surprisingly dry-spoken for a girl of eighteen, laid her hand on Selina's gloved arm.

"Unfortunately that's just like Mamma, overlooking the fact he was your escort because she wanted him then herself. And who do you suppose the droll nephew is that Mrs. Jinnie Cumming brought with her? The humor of it's helped me bear up under this ridiculous dress. I must look like an irresponsible in its spangles, don't I, Selina, for I feel like one?"

"It's really a wonderful dress, Adele. Who's the droll nephew?"

"Our Mr. Cannon that Mamma wouldn't let me ask here to the reception to-night. I was perfectly hateful and threw it up to her a bit ago."

Did Adele here look away and her cheek grow pink with rare color? Was she pleased that it should be Mr. Cannon?

With a change of tone she spoke again. "Juliette wouldn't come at the last moment. Selina, she's unhappy, and I think we ought to tell you so. It happened while you were gone." Again with a change of tone: "Did you ever see anything so lovely as Amanthus and so entrancing?"

"Our Mr. Doe thinks so," said Selina. "Witness, please."

Across the hall in the open doorway of the library stood Mr. Cyril Doe, the secretary, endeavoring to fit a glass into his eye with all the awkwardness ofone about to lose an arm or a leg or two from sheer inability to hold on to them.

"Endeavoring to fit a glass into his eye."

"Endeavoring to fit a glass into his eye."

"Endeavoring to fit a glass into his eye."

"Did you ever before see a monocle except on the stage, Selina? In 'Lord Dundreary' and that sort of thing? I never have," from Adele. "And the truly wonderful grimaces he's making getting it to stay! It's sort of horribly fascinating to see if he'sgoing to succeed. There, it's done, and what's it in place to gaze on?"

And following the undoubted line of Mr. Doe's vision, as indicated by Selina, Adele came to Amanthus near the embowered newell post, a dozen feet away from the library doorway.

Amanthus! Dimpling for three callow youths surrounding her. Amanthus of the laughing eyes, the laughing cheeks, the laughing lips, Amanthus of the sunny hair and violet gaze, who laughed, as now, as the flowers blow, nor knew why more than they! Amanthus, supple and young and enchanting, in floating clouds of gauzy yellow, a wreath of buds upon her daffodil hair, and slender slippers of daffodil gold upon her buoyant feet! Maud stood near her talking to some other callow youth, handsome enough in her white tarlatan dress with glossy green leaves and their berries in her red-brown hair, and young and vital, too, but not for Mr. Cyril Doe. It was upon that vision known to earth as Amanthus this monocled, British, chinless person was gazing.

"And Mr. Jones, after declining our party, came with you, Selina," from Adele. "We'll be regarding you as another Amanthus."

Selina arched her pretty throat, then remembered to be modest. It was hard not to be complacent about it just a bit, the more so that Mr. Jones having shaken loose from Mrs. Carter, here was seen making his way through the crowded parlors backto her. But at least if she was not so really modest as she could wish about it, she could dissemble.

"Adele, look out in the hall again," thus she sought to put the matter aside. "Mr. Doe has found Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle, and she is taking him to Amanthus."

The next day Maud spoke accusingly to Selina. One rarely deceived Maud. "Don't be self-deceiving about it. Don't be too scathing of Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Grosvenor. Look into your own heart first, if you please, Selina. You were the more elated over taking Mr. Jones than over any of the rest of it, yourself, and you needn't tell me, for one, you weren't! The big frog in the home pool means more to the little frogs than the big fish from strange waters. I suppose I'd have been, too."

The evening of this same day Selina told Culpepper of Maud's accusation. Papa and Mamma, Uncle Bruce and the guests were gone to Mrs. Tuttle's dinner party, and Culpepper on request had come round to spend the evening with her and Auntie. It was a comfort thus to have him in the family, making it possible to ask such things of him, and to talk to him about quite personal matters. He and she were in the parlor before the flickering fire and the burnished brasses, and Auntie in the next room was playing her evening game of Napoleon solitaire on the dining-table.

"Maud didn't quite say I was an incipient snob, Culpepper," Selina commented after telling him thestory of the whole evening, the rescue of Uncle Bruce by Mr. Jones included. "She didn't actually say I was as despicable as that, but she implied it." Selina flushed and grew even a little more thoughtful. "And the truth of it is, Culpepper, I had to admit to Maud her accusation in a sense is true. I was elated over taking Mr. Jones. But Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Grosvenor could not have been made to acknowledge on any less worldly grounds the something I had come to recognize as necessary to my Wistar self-respect, and especially if I were to continue going with Adele. I've been thinking it over and I'm right about this. But there's worse! I flaunted my new evening cape and was complacent over it. I even felt myself pitying Mamma and feeling cross toward her about her old scarf. Whereas if I come down to facts, Cousin Anna's money which I still owe her, went to replace that used to buy the cape and some other things. It isn't the actual cape I'm meaning, though, nor the literal episode of taking Mr. Jones to the Carter's, Culpepper? Of course you know that? What I'm worrying over is what Maud calls 'the principle back of the thing.' I'm not one bit pleased with what I see in myself that way. Do we go on forever climbing three feet out of the well by day, and falling back two feet by night? Will I ever get anywhere?"

The iliad of her little woes, piteously assailing those walls of half-knowledge shutting her out from her mede of common-sense and common understanding!The odyssey of her little wanderings following half-truths, misled by platitudes, failing ever of the haven of truth where she would be! Alas for you, Mamma and Auntie, who with all your yearnings over her, have so pitifully equipped your one ewe lamb for life!

Culpepper the while Selina talked, thus guileless of her guilelessness, thus innocent of her innocence, had been gazing at her across the space of the hearth between them, his eyes upon her, but following thoughts of his own. He came to himself with a start.

Now that she, this pretty girl here before the fire with him in this intimate aloofness, was growing up, tall and fair, that crown of pale, shining hair distinguishing her, it came upon him at times such as now, with a clutch, a catching of his breath, to have her still so ingenuously sweet, still so honest, still so utterly and so endearingly confiding. It disarmed him. It broke down his control. It got into that blatant blood of his and for moments made him see red and feel afraid for himself. He wanted to seize her hands there in her lap, and kiss their helpless palms! No, he wanted to seizeherand kissher, kiss her until she awoke to the facts of life and—understood. And this achieved, lay down the mandate to her that he was here, and all the while had been here, for the man-made and Heaven-sanctioned purpose of taking material and every other sort of care of her, the woman. His stepmother knew it, hisCousin Robert knew it, ole Miss, he'd take his oath, more than half suspected it.

True, he had nothing whatever of his own, only a princely allowance from that big-souled person, his stepmother. But God Almighty, what of that? He'd have all that he needed having in his own good time. He was the stripe and make that batters any old thing out of the way of the going if it be mistaken enough to get there—the sort, in fact, that succeeds. The baffling thing here was of a different nature, being Selina herself. You can't crush a bud into its bloom by the mere force of your longing; you can't kiss a child that knows no passion, with passion!

Culpepper, twenty-three himself, but no less sophisticated than he would be when he was thirty-three, pulled himself together, big, good-looking young giant that he was, the effect of whose bodily presence here was always to further dwarf the shabby little parlor.

The soft flip of Auntie's cards being dealt out on the table came from the next room. It was like a restoring touch from her calm personality.

"One thing is cleared up for me by last night's happenings," declared Culpepper cheerfully.

"What?" from Selina. She had been thinking how comfy and nice it was, this long chatty evening with him, and the firelight, and the always restful sense of Auntie's proximity.

"Why, Tuttle, or Tuts, as we of his class at college called him, was in training for a color-sensethose four years, matching suits to socks, and socks to neckties. But for that nicety for color so faithfully attained, where would little Mr. Bruce be right now?"

Auntie's voice came in from the next room. "Mr. Jones is a gentleman, and has proved it, Culpepper. I won't have you decrying him."

"All right, ole Miss; what you say goes. What we at college kicked about was that he was such a lady."

"Culpepper, not another word," from Auntie.

"Just to ask how much longer the high and mighties, these Britishers, are with us," pleaded Culpepper, "so I'll know when it's safe for me to show up around here in the old way?"

"One more day only," Selina reassured him, "Mr. Carter's giving them a dinner and smoker at the club to-morrow evening. Mrs. Harrison has arranged for them to stop for a day at Selimcroft, her Uncle's stock-farm up your way, as they go. She discovered that they want to see some of our typical horses and stables and training tracks and such, you'll know just what, better than I do. Mrs. Harrison and Amanthus are going up for the day with them. Amanthus is so impressed by Mr. Doe, the secretary, she's overcome. It hasn't often happened to Amanthus. He told her for some reason or other, that everything that's good form in England just now wears bangs. And she asked him, you know how Amanthus does ask such things, if he meant horses?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWOSelina put on hat and jacket the day after Uncle Bruce's guests left, and went over to see Juliette. The Caldwell house was of brick with gables, a bay, a small Gothic porch, pointed windows and clambering, leafless vines. Juliette's father, as said before, was a rising business man, and his own and his pretty wife's people were well to do. There was considerable extravagance and laxity and also waste in the household, and the children up to a certain point, from Juliette, the oldest, down through her two younger sisters and the son just toddling, did pretty much as they pleased.But of late everyone was worried about Juliette. She was dauncie, as the darkies say, in other words, listless and indifferent and pale. In all the years past this same gay little Juliette had stood with her friends as embodiment of life and vividness and enthusiasm.Mrs. Caldwell opened the side door to Selina's tap. She had a gingham apron with a bib over her rather elaborate crimson cashmere wrapper. Dark like Juliette, and like her also in being aquiline and vivid, and still a bit frivolous in her tastes, now she lookeddisheveled and cross and tired. They were an outspoken as well as a bit haphazard household, these prosperous Caldwells."No cook since Monday, Selina, and neither nurse for the baby or house-boy to-day. When one of them gets mad, the others always take it up and follow. What we're coming to I'm sure I can't say. The older servants such as my mother's been used to dealing with, are dying off, and the younger ones don't know how to do a thing and won't let you show them."It was a familiar plaint, and Selina was so accustomed to it, it slid nowadays from the consciousness as housekeepers voiced it, like a too-oft repeated platitude. Cousin Anna had such trouble continually; Mrs. Williams, while Selina taught there, never seemed to have her full quota of servants at any one time and never ceased to say so, and the Addisons and even the Carters were complainers, too. Selina took Mrs. Caldwell's grievance as a matter of course."I've been coming over for a good long visit with Judy ever since I got home," she replied, "but if you're busy, you'll need her, and won't want me, Mrs. Caldwell?""Juliette? I'm glad you've come hunting her. I'm sure I don't know what we're going to do with her, Selina. She's never been stubborn or ugly in her life before. It's been going on now for sometime, this undercurrent of resentment to her father, and I don't mind speaking out with you, Selina, we lookon you quite as one of ourselves, it's come to a break, an open rupture between them. Her father can't see it anyway but that she's been underhand in her defiance, and she won't allow that she cares in the least what he thinks. Of course, I don't know how much she may have told you. Go on up to her room. The little girls are at school, and I'm thankful the baby's asleep. Juliette and I've just finished in the kitchen and she's upstairs starting to straighten the bedrooms."Selina went through the halls to the front stairway. She didn't fancy the Caldwells' house. Everything was over-elaborate and nothing very well cared for and there seemed a regrettable mixture. She couldn't bear the bisque cupid, for instance, which hung from the costly gilt chandelier. And she and Adele and Maud deplored the portrait of Juliette at three which hung over the mantelpiece. Cunning Judy as she really had been, here forever seated on a rose-bank, her curls in tiers, her cheeks carmine, and a sash of blue bound round her tummy so precisely that her embroidered skirts flew out beneath as though released. And Selina disliked the showy pattern in the velvet carpet on the halls and up the stairs. But she did love Juliette.She went up the steps. She knew something of the trouble between Juliette and her father, and could guess what had brought about the present rupture. About the time she went South, Juliette had dared be audacious in a way that caused herfriends to hold breath, terrified at thought of what the storm would be when discovery by her father came.Having reached the hallway above, Selina tapped on a door which was ajar at the head of the stairs, the door to Juliette's own room. At the sound, Juliette, in an apron like the one upon her mother, turned, and seeing Selina in the doorway, sat down suddenly on an ottoman at hand and resting her black-tressed little head against the edge of the bureau she was dusting, went into passionate weeping. It was as if the sight of her friend loosed the pent-up flood of her unhappiness.Quickly enough words equally as passionate made their way through the wild sobbing. "It's the stupidity of Papa's position, his utter lack of reason, that's so maddening, Selina. 'I'll see a daughter of mine going to college!' is the whole of it. And his unfairness, too, stops any attempted answering on my part after he's had his say, with 'That'll do now. I don't care to hear any more on the subject.' And what's his argument, I'd like to know, Selina? He hasn't any. Simply none. Just the senseless, stubborn stand he's got from somewhere. 'I'll see a daughter of mine going to college. Get busy and help your mother with the younger children and the house, and don't let's hear any further nonsense on the subject.'"Selina sat down aghast. Yielding by disposition herself, and product of a lifelong submission to aloving if sometimes paralyzing authority against which she had lifted a tentative protest only once or twice, she gazed at Juliette dismayed. At pretty Judy, facing her from the ottoman, she herself now on a nearby chair, their young knees almost a-touch, a miniature, flashing, apparently altogether volatile creature, suggestive of the ruby-throated hummingbirds that darted about Auntie's flowers and vines in the backyard in summer!This little Juliette had been raised under a certain amount of authority, too, but the authority of a young and complacent father who overindulged his family so long as his own mood was genial, but who when his temper was ruffled, as Maud put it, like the heathen raged. Still a parent and father is parent and father. The foundation tenet to all known ethics in the family relation as Selina was familiar with them, that of unquestioning obedience to the man of the household, was being repudiated, and this by seemingly crushable little Juliette."I've talked college ever since our junior year at the high school," she here reminded Selina.She had. Juliette had a northern cousin in Ohio whose letters to her began to be dated from such an institution that same year. There were several college-graduate women in their own community, too, figures upon whom Juliette and the rest of them had gazed, awed. And about whom they mutually confessed to find, a certain carriage and a definite assurance, a look and manner more common to busymen, of those having business to attend to and the will and the ability to do it.But who had dreamed that seeds so chance as these could have sown themselves in little Juliette's breast to become the dominant possession of that wee abode?Little? Wee? Volatile? Crushable?It was as if Juliette there on her ottoman vigorously using her pocket handkerchief to stay the still welling tears, thus read these oft-repeated and disqualifying diminutives applied to her in Selina's mind."All of you, in the family and out of it, always infuriate me by fixing the measure of my ability by the size of my body!" The crimson of her fury rushed to her cheeks afresh. "When I read my graduating essay as an honor girl, nobody gave me any credit for having got the honor, whereas everybody clapped and said how cute and that sort of thing."It was so. It had seemed a joke, little Juliette with her crimson cheeks and her unfurled essay. "Judy, poor Judy," murmured Selina, aghast the more at these revelations from this friend she had thought she knew."You went to teaching," Juliette was continuing, "and that made me think on my part. Then you went South, getting about your business in life as you saw it, and at that I up and told Papa what I wanted. He treated it as a huge joke on my part, chucked me under the chin, I always have loathedhis doing that at any time, and said for perpetrating it he'd give me a box at the minstrels and I could ask my friends. He actually did say that, Selina. And when I persisted that it wasn't a joke, that I'd made up my mind I wanted to go to college, and sooner or later was going, he was incredulous at first, and then flew into a rage and told me I was a little fool and there'd been enough of this nonsense, and if I said any more I could go to my room and stay there until I could be sensible. When I took it up the next time and insisted he owed it to me to show me why he felt as he did about a girl going to college, he said he'd show me the only argument he purposed advancing, and took me by my shoulder and marched me up here to my room, and going out slammed the door. I wrote him a note then and sent it to him at the store by mail, saying if he'd show me truly and convincingly, why, I'd give in. He didn't answer, but told Mamma to tell me if there was any more of it, he'd stop the allowance I'd asked for my last birthday.""And all this by yourself, Judy?" from Selina, deploringly. "And I not here near you to help you, nor to comfort you!""I've never touched my allowance since," hotly, "and I don't mean to. That's why I didn't come to Adele's. I didn't have the dress to wear and I wouldn't ask for it. I haven't said another word to him on the subject of college since and I'm not going to. I just went around to Professor Maynard'sboys' school and asked him if he'd take me and get me ready for college, and he said he would. I had some money saved up; you see, both my grandfathers always give us children money at Christmas and birthdays. This was while you were gone, Selina. Mamma and baby were away, staying for a couple of weeks at Grandma's on account of the whooping-cough next door to us, and it made it easier for me to manage.""Judy! And you had the courage! You little—well youarea little thing, and Ihaveto say it. Algy told me something about it, told me that you were being coached but didn't want anything said about it.""Algy helped me plan it. His father quarreled with him because hewouldn'tgo to college. It's the same sort of principle. He was sent to Professor Maynard's to be made ready and wouldn't stay. That's how I came to go there. Algy told me about him."Algy! The butt of their fond joking and laughter! Truly, as Selina had said to herself along other lines, you never can tell! "And what happened next, Judy?""When Mamma came back from Grandma's, she began questioning, and I had to tell her. And of course Papa found out then. And because he's a stubbornly limited person, Oh, I'm going to say it, I've thought it long before this especial trouble between us—he thinks, for instance, that horriblebisque cupid in our parlor is the cutest thing in the house—Selina, my life and my wants are to be lopped off to his. I'm not going to stand it. I'm going to college somehow, you hear me now, Selina. I daresay it's his own stubbornness cropping out in me, but that doesn't deter me either. I've a right to my own life, and I'm going if planning can get me there."But at least she disliked the bisque cupid! There was comfort in knowing that!

Selina put on hat and jacket the day after Uncle Bruce's guests left, and went over to see Juliette. The Caldwell house was of brick with gables, a bay, a small Gothic porch, pointed windows and clambering, leafless vines. Juliette's father, as said before, was a rising business man, and his own and his pretty wife's people were well to do. There was considerable extravagance and laxity and also waste in the household, and the children up to a certain point, from Juliette, the oldest, down through her two younger sisters and the son just toddling, did pretty much as they pleased.

But of late everyone was worried about Juliette. She was dauncie, as the darkies say, in other words, listless and indifferent and pale. In all the years past this same gay little Juliette had stood with her friends as embodiment of life and vividness and enthusiasm.

Mrs. Caldwell opened the side door to Selina's tap. She had a gingham apron with a bib over her rather elaborate crimson cashmere wrapper. Dark like Juliette, and like her also in being aquiline and vivid, and still a bit frivolous in her tastes, now she lookeddisheveled and cross and tired. They were an outspoken as well as a bit haphazard household, these prosperous Caldwells.

"No cook since Monday, Selina, and neither nurse for the baby or house-boy to-day. When one of them gets mad, the others always take it up and follow. What we're coming to I'm sure I can't say. The older servants such as my mother's been used to dealing with, are dying off, and the younger ones don't know how to do a thing and won't let you show them."

It was a familiar plaint, and Selina was so accustomed to it, it slid nowadays from the consciousness as housekeepers voiced it, like a too-oft repeated platitude. Cousin Anna had such trouble continually; Mrs. Williams, while Selina taught there, never seemed to have her full quota of servants at any one time and never ceased to say so, and the Addisons and even the Carters were complainers, too. Selina took Mrs. Caldwell's grievance as a matter of course.

"I've been coming over for a good long visit with Judy ever since I got home," she replied, "but if you're busy, you'll need her, and won't want me, Mrs. Caldwell?"

"Juliette? I'm glad you've come hunting her. I'm sure I don't know what we're going to do with her, Selina. She's never been stubborn or ugly in her life before. It's been going on now for sometime, this undercurrent of resentment to her father, and I don't mind speaking out with you, Selina, we lookon you quite as one of ourselves, it's come to a break, an open rupture between them. Her father can't see it anyway but that she's been underhand in her defiance, and she won't allow that she cares in the least what he thinks. Of course, I don't know how much she may have told you. Go on up to her room. The little girls are at school, and I'm thankful the baby's asleep. Juliette and I've just finished in the kitchen and she's upstairs starting to straighten the bedrooms."

Selina went through the halls to the front stairway. She didn't fancy the Caldwells' house. Everything was over-elaborate and nothing very well cared for and there seemed a regrettable mixture. She couldn't bear the bisque cupid, for instance, which hung from the costly gilt chandelier. And she and Adele and Maud deplored the portrait of Juliette at three which hung over the mantelpiece. Cunning Judy as she really had been, here forever seated on a rose-bank, her curls in tiers, her cheeks carmine, and a sash of blue bound round her tummy so precisely that her embroidered skirts flew out beneath as though released. And Selina disliked the showy pattern in the velvet carpet on the halls and up the stairs. But she did love Juliette.

She went up the steps. She knew something of the trouble between Juliette and her father, and could guess what had brought about the present rupture. About the time she went South, Juliette had dared be audacious in a way that caused herfriends to hold breath, terrified at thought of what the storm would be when discovery by her father came.

Having reached the hallway above, Selina tapped on a door which was ajar at the head of the stairs, the door to Juliette's own room. At the sound, Juliette, in an apron like the one upon her mother, turned, and seeing Selina in the doorway, sat down suddenly on an ottoman at hand and resting her black-tressed little head against the edge of the bureau she was dusting, went into passionate weeping. It was as if the sight of her friend loosed the pent-up flood of her unhappiness.

Quickly enough words equally as passionate made their way through the wild sobbing. "It's the stupidity of Papa's position, his utter lack of reason, that's so maddening, Selina. 'I'll see a daughter of mine going to college!' is the whole of it. And his unfairness, too, stops any attempted answering on my part after he's had his say, with 'That'll do now. I don't care to hear any more on the subject.' And what's his argument, I'd like to know, Selina? He hasn't any. Simply none. Just the senseless, stubborn stand he's got from somewhere. 'I'll see a daughter of mine going to college. Get busy and help your mother with the younger children and the house, and don't let's hear any further nonsense on the subject.'"

Selina sat down aghast. Yielding by disposition herself, and product of a lifelong submission to aloving if sometimes paralyzing authority against which she had lifted a tentative protest only once or twice, she gazed at Juliette dismayed. At pretty Judy, facing her from the ottoman, she herself now on a nearby chair, their young knees almost a-touch, a miniature, flashing, apparently altogether volatile creature, suggestive of the ruby-throated hummingbirds that darted about Auntie's flowers and vines in the backyard in summer!

This little Juliette had been raised under a certain amount of authority, too, but the authority of a young and complacent father who overindulged his family so long as his own mood was genial, but who when his temper was ruffled, as Maud put it, like the heathen raged. Still a parent and father is parent and father. The foundation tenet to all known ethics in the family relation as Selina was familiar with them, that of unquestioning obedience to the man of the household, was being repudiated, and this by seemingly crushable little Juliette.

"I've talked college ever since our junior year at the high school," she here reminded Selina.

She had. Juliette had a northern cousin in Ohio whose letters to her began to be dated from such an institution that same year. There were several college-graduate women in their own community, too, figures upon whom Juliette and the rest of them had gazed, awed. And about whom they mutually confessed to find, a certain carriage and a definite assurance, a look and manner more common to busymen, of those having business to attend to and the will and the ability to do it.

But who had dreamed that seeds so chance as these could have sown themselves in little Juliette's breast to become the dominant possession of that wee abode?

Little? Wee? Volatile? Crushable?

It was as if Juliette there on her ottoman vigorously using her pocket handkerchief to stay the still welling tears, thus read these oft-repeated and disqualifying diminutives applied to her in Selina's mind.

"All of you, in the family and out of it, always infuriate me by fixing the measure of my ability by the size of my body!" The crimson of her fury rushed to her cheeks afresh. "When I read my graduating essay as an honor girl, nobody gave me any credit for having got the honor, whereas everybody clapped and said how cute and that sort of thing."

It was so. It had seemed a joke, little Juliette with her crimson cheeks and her unfurled essay. "Judy, poor Judy," murmured Selina, aghast the more at these revelations from this friend she had thought she knew.

"You went to teaching," Juliette was continuing, "and that made me think on my part. Then you went South, getting about your business in life as you saw it, and at that I up and told Papa what I wanted. He treated it as a huge joke on my part, chucked me under the chin, I always have loathedhis doing that at any time, and said for perpetrating it he'd give me a box at the minstrels and I could ask my friends. He actually did say that, Selina. And when I persisted that it wasn't a joke, that I'd made up my mind I wanted to go to college, and sooner or later was going, he was incredulous at first, and then flew into a rage and told me I was a little fool and there'd been enough of this nonsense, and if I said any more I could go to my room and stay there until I could be sensible. When I took it up the next time and insisted he owed it to me to show me why he felt as he did about a girl going to college, he said he'd show me the only argument he purposed advancing, and took me by my shoulder and marched me up here to my room, and going out slammed the door. I wrote him a note then and sent it to him at the store by mail, saying if he'd show me truly and convincingly, why, I'd give in. He didn't answer, but told Mamma to tell me if there was any more of it, he'd stop the allowance I'd asked for my last birthday."

"And all this by yourself, Judy?" from Selina, deploringly. "And I not here near you to help you, nor to comfort you!"

"I've never touched my allowance since," hotly, "and I don't mean to. That's why I didn't come to Adele's. I didn't have the dress to wear and I wouldn't ask for it. I haven't said another word to him on the subject of college since and I'm not going to. I just went around to Professor Maynard'sboys' school and asked him if he'd take me and get me ready for college, and he said he would. I had some money saved up; you see, both my grandfathers always give us children money at Christmas and birthdays. This was while you were gone, Selina. Mamma and baby were away, staying for a couple of weeks at Grandma's on account of the whooping-cough next door to us, and it made it easier for me to manage."

"Judy! And you had the courage! You little—well youarea little thing, and Ihaveto say it. Algy told me something about it, told me that you were being coached but didn't want anything said about it."

"Algy helped me plan it. His father quarreled with him because hewouldn'tgo to college. It's the same sort of principle. He was sent to Professor Maynard's to be made ready and wouldn't stay. That's how I came to go there. Algy told me about him."

Algy! The butt of their fond joking and laughter! Truly, as Selina had said to herself along other lines, you never can tell! "And what happened next, Judy?"

"When Mamma came back from Grandma's, she began questioning, and I had to tell her. And of course Papa found out then. And because he's a stubbornly limited person, Oh, I'm going to say it, I've thought it long before this especial trouble between us—he thinks, for instance, that horriblebisque cupid in our parlor is the cutest thing in the house—Selina, my life and my wants are to be lopped off to his. I'm not going to stand it. I'm going to college somehow, you hear me now, Selina. I daresay it's his own stubbornness cropping out in me, but that doesn't deter me either. I've a right to my own life, and I'm going if planning can get me there."

But at least she disliked the bisque cupid! There was comfort in knowing that!

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREEWith Juliette avowedly rebellious, and Adele confessedly the square peg in the round hole, Selina when she said good-bye at the Caldwell's, went in the Addison house next door to get some comfort from Maud.It was the middle of the morning, and Mrs. Addison, a big wholesome-looking, capable personage, was overseeing the hanging of fresh lace curtains in the parlors. She sent Selina on up to Maud's room, after, like Mrs. Caldwell, a plain-spoken word."Now that Maud's through with the novelty of refitting her room, though I saw nothing wrong with it before, she's gone back into complaining discontent again. What's the matter with you all, Selina?""I'm wondering myself, Mrs. Addison," said Selina truthfully.She went on up. Maud was clearing the litter from a big deal table that certainly did not add anything to the looks of her room with its new blue carpet and blue paper and ruffled curtains and its still a-wee-bit-envied cottage furniture. Maud was going in for china painting right now and kept herequipment on the deal table. She exhibited the pitcher of a tea-set of three pieces."Maud was going in for china painting.""There's nothing to it, Selina; painting pink butterflies on a blue background doesn't satisfy one bit. In my heart, and you know it and I know it, too, I don't care a rap for decorated china tea-sets."It was Maud's third essay into the arts since leavingschool eighteen months ago. She had tried with two successive teachers to manufacture a voice which was not there, and also had taken a course in Kensington embroidery. A cover of blue felt cloth, done in drab cat-tails was on her reading-table now."I've just been over with Juliette," Selina explained."At least she knows what she does want, and that's a good deal," from Maud."She hates the bisque cupid as much as we do," Selina hastened to relate, "and hasn't said so. It's taken this last to make her disloyal.""Maybe she hates herself at three on the rose-bank, too," surmised Maud. "Tell Adele and it'll cheer her. Algy's so hot over the treatment of Juliette at home, he goes around every single day to see her.""And we didn't half take up his row that time when he wouldn't go to college. I'd almost forgotten till Juliette reminded me. Have you ever thought what a real dear Algy's always been? We haven't half estimated him? When persons do and do for you, you come to take it for granted? Think how we've always called on Algy?""I suppose," said Maud to this reflectively, as she stood at the washstand rinsing her hands of their paint stains, "we're all fools to some other intelligence. Algy's seemed slower than the rest of us. And now I want to read you a note from Mr. Welling showing whereheputsme. As I just said, meaningmyself as well as Algy, we're all fools to some other intelligence. Of course, Mr. Welling is older and has had college and has been about, but still it's trying. And I've been so altogether complacent, imagining he was getting value received in his visits round here, reading German with me, and all. Maybe he has been getting it in a sense I hadn't reckoned on," bitterly. "He asked me the other night, Selina, in that jocular way of his that one ought always to distrust, if I had read the editorial in the morning paper on our new democratic president's first message. I hadn't. I didn't know there was a message, and I knew I wasn't a bit bright as to just what a president's message is supposed to be. I had to formulate some sort of position though, and so as I went along, I said no, I never read the papers much, that Mamma glanced over the deaths and headlines and reported them while Papa ate his breakfast, and then Papa went off with the paper in his pocket. And I added that we were on the other side anyhow, that the Addisons had been Unionists, and were with the republican interests ever since.""I know," said Selina hastily, this being the one thing about Maud and her family always hard to get around, and therefore a matter to refrain from dwelling on as far as possible."'Mr. Welling looked at me in that ... quizzing way of his.'"Maud was continuing: "Mr. Welling looked at me in that prolonged, considering, quizzing way of his, his spectacles somehow always seeming to intensify the effect, you know what I mean, and with his lips pursed as if he were having a jolly good time for some unseen reason. He generally is when he looks that way, and at somebody else's expense, too. I hurried to add that of course I supposed I ought to show more interest in questions of the day and that perhaps I would if the papers were ever at hand around the house.""I never read them much myself," agreed Selina, "except when something comes up that I hear Papa and Culpepper talking to each other about. Then I try to remember to look it up.""Well, listen now to what followed. We're only highly diverting and amusing to 'em, Selina. This morning I received notices by mail of subscriptions in my name to two papers, one local and one not, and a note from Mr. Welling. Listen to it, Selina, and then you'll know what they think of us. He's laughing at me from the very start to the finish.""My dear Miss Maud:"I am going to hope that you will read the editorials in these two papers every day. It is unnecessary to say I have no sinister object in view such as putting that in your way which might influence you adversely to the political faith you say you have elected to move in. It is rather because I consider that newspapers typify the most virile and living English of our day, as well as embody the history of our own times, and for these reasons as well as for their perforce certain amount of incisive logic, are a means of disciplining and cultivating the mind. Such articles as appear in a reputable paper's editorial columns, not now and then, but in every issue of every first rate daily, will gradually effect an undisciplined reader, and cause her to form by absorption—"Maud lowered the sheet of close-written paper and looked over at Selina. An indignant color glowed in her face. "You notice he restricts himself to the one pronoun, Selina, 'and cause her to form by absorption—— '""I did notice," agreed Selina unwillingly."Wait till you hear the whole of it," Maud lifted the pages and resumed:—"will gradually effect an undisciplined reader, and cause her to form by absorption, habits of logical contemplation and discussion which eventually will enable her to discern the salient points and the related elements of a question, than which there is no greater conscious pleasure. And when she arrives at that stage of development, to say what she means instead of gradually finding out (?)—"Again Maud lowered the page."There's a question mark in parenthesis after the 'finding out,' I ought to tell you, Selina. He was afraid the implication might escape me. Well, if he's amused, I suppose we ought to be willing to supply it to him."She resumed:"—to say what she means instead of gradually finding out (?) what she means from what she says. I take it that intelligent thinking requires as much mental discipline as military action requires physical discipline. I trust you will not consider it anoblesse obligeto read the tariff articles too, though their disciplining effect would also be excellent. But if it requires any grinding, I beg of you to be certain you are acquitted of any obligation in this direction, resting upon the claim of so virulent a disciple to free trade as myself, suggesting it."Maud flung the several pages down, and faced Selina. "There! Certainly you can see that he's laughing at me! What else can you make of it? And that's what they really think of us, Selina, andour attainments we rather flattered ourselves over.""It—er—shows trouble he's taken, too," from Selina weakly and as she felt as she said it, without conviction."It shows an abysmal depth of pity, not to say hilarity with the pity," gloomily."Maud," from Selina with reluctance and hesitation, "what's free trade that he says he's such a virulent disciple of? Has it to do with the—er—tariff?""That's the trouble," bitterly. "I don't know."

With Juliette avowedly rebellious, and Adele confessedly the square peg in the round hole, Selina when she said good-bye at the Caldwell's, went in the Addison house next door to get some comfort from Maud.

It was the middle of the morning, and Mrs. Addison, a big wholesome-looking, capable personage, was overseeing the hanging of fresh lace curtains in the parlors. She sent Selina on up to Maud's room, after, like Mrs. Caldwell, a plain-spoken word.

"Now that Maud's through with the novelty of refitting her room, though I saw nothing wrong with it before, she's gone back into complaining discontent again. What's the matter with you all, Selina?"

"I'm wondering myself, Mrs. Addison," said Selina truthfully.

She went on up. Maud was clearing the litter from a big deal table that certainly did not add anything to the looks of her room with its new blue carpet and blue paper and ruffled curtains and its still a-wee-bit-envied cottage furniture. Maud was going in for china painting right now and kept herequipment on the deal table. She exhibited the pitcher of a tea-set of three pieces.

"Maud was going in for china painting."

"Maud was going in for china painting."

"Maud was going in for china painting."

"There's nothing to it, Selina; painting pink butterflies on a blue background doesn't satisfy one bit. In my heart, and you know it and I know it, too, I don't care a rap for decorated china tea-sets."

It was Maud's third essay into the arts since leavingschool eighteen months ago. She had tried with two successive teachers to manufacture a voice which was not there, and also had taken a course in Kensington embroidery. A cover of blue felt cloth, done in drab cat-tails was on her reading-table now.

"I've just been over with Juliette," Selina explained.

"At least she knows what she does want, and that's a good deal," from Maud.

"She hates the bisque cupid as much as we do," Selina hastened to relate, "and hasn't said so. It's taken this last to make her disloyal."

"Maybe she hates herself at three on the rose-bank, too," surmised Maud. "Tell Adele and it'll cheer her. Algy's so hot over the treatment of Juliette at home, he goes around every single day to see her."

"And we didn't half take up his row that time when he wouldn't go to college. I'd almost forgotten till Juliette reminded me. Have you ever thought what a real dear Algy's always been? We haven't half estimated him? When persons do and do for you, you come to take it for granted? Think how we've always called on Algy?"

"I suppose," said Maud to this reflectively, as she stood at the washstand rinsing her hands of their paint stains, "we're all fools to some other intelligence. Algy's seemed slower than the rest of us. And now I want to read you a note from Mr. Welling showing whereheputsme. As I just said, meaningmyself as well as Algy, we're all fools to some other intelligence. Of course, Mr. Welling is older and has had college and has been about, but still it's trying. And I've been so altogether complacent, imagining he was getting value received in his visits round here, reading German with me, and all. Maybe he has been getting it in a sense I hadn't reckoned on," bitterly. "He asked me the other night, Selina, in that jocular way of his that one ought always to distrust, if I had read the editorial in the morning paper on our new democratic president's first message. I hadn't. I didn't know there was a message, and I knew I wasn't a bit bright as to just what a president's message is supposed to be. I had to formulate some sort of position though, and so as I went along, I said no, I never read the papers much, that Mamma glanced over the deaths and headlines and reported them while Papa ate his breakfast, and then Papa went off with the paper in his pocket. And I added that we were on the other side anyhow, that the Addisons had been Unionists, and were with the republican interests ever since."

"I know," said Selina hastily, this being the one thing about Maud and her family always hard to get around, and therefore a matter to refrain from dwelling on as far as possible.

"'Mr. Welling looked at me in that ... quizzing way of his.'"

"'Mr. Welling looked at me in that ... quizzing way of his.'"

"'Mr. Welling looked at me in that ... quizzing way of his.'"

Maud was continuing: "Mr. Welling looked at me in that prolonged, considering, quizzing way of his, his spectacles somehow always seeming to intensify the effect, you know what I mean, and with his lips pursed as if he were having a jolly good time for some unseen reason. He generally is when he looks that way, and at somebody else's expense, too. I hurried to add that of course I supposed I ought to show more interest in questions of the day and that perhaps I would if the papers were ever at hand around the house."

"I never read them much myself," agreed Selina, "except when something comes up that I hear Papa and Culpepper talking to each other about. Then I try to remember to look it up."

"Well, listen now to what followed. We're only highly diverting and amusing to 'em, Selina. This morning I received notices by mail of subscriptions in my name to two papers, one local and one not, and a note from Mr. Welling. Listen to it, Selina, and then you'll know what they think of us. He's laughing at me from the very start to the finish."

"My dear Miss Maud:

"I am going to hope that you will read the editorials in these two papers every day. It is unnecessary to say I have no sinister object in view such as putting that in your way which might influence you adversely to the political faith you say you have elected to move in. It is rather because I consider that newspapers typify the most virile and living English of our day, as well as embody the history of our own times, and for these reasons as well as for their perforce certain amount of incisive logic, are a means of disciplining and cultivating the mind. Such articles as appear in a reputable paper's editorial columns, not now and then, but in every issue of every first rate daily, will gradually effect an undisciplined reader, and cause her to form by absorption—"

Maud lowered the sheet of close-written paper and looked over at Selina. An indignant color glowed in her face. "You notice he restricts himself to the one pronoun, Selina, 'and cause her to form by absorption—— '"

"I did notice," agreed Selina unwillingly.

"Wait till you hear the whole of it," Maud lifted the pages and resumed:

—"will gradually effect an undisciplined reader, and cause her to form by absorption, habits of logical contemplation and discussion which eventually will enable her to discern the salient points and the related elements of a question, than which there is no greater conscious pleasure. And when she arrives at that stage of development, to say what she means instead of gradually finding out (?)—"

Again Maud lowered the page.

"There's a question mark in parenthesis after the 'finding out,' I ought to tell you, Selina. He was afraid the implication might escape me. Well, if he's amused, I suppose we ought to be willing to supply it to him."

She resumed:

"—to say what she means instead of gradually finding out (?) what she means from what she says. I take it that intelligent thinking requires as much mental discipline as military action requires physical discipline. I trust you will not consider it anoblesse obligeto read the tariff articles too, though their disciplining effect would also be excellent. But if it requires any grinding, I beg of you to be certain you are acquitted of any obligation in this direction, resting upon the claim of so virulent a disciple to free trade as myself, suggesting it."

Maud flung the several pages down, and faced Selina. "There! Certainly you can see that he's laughing at me! What else can you make of it? And that's what they really think of us, Selina, andour attainments we rather flattered ourselves over."

"It—er—shows trouble he's taken, too," from Selina weakly and as she felt as she said it, without conviction.

"It shows an abysmal depth of pity, not to say hilarity with the pity," gloomily.

"Maud," from Selina with reluctance and hesitation, "what's free trade that he says he's such a virulent disciple of? Has it to do with the—er—tariff?"

"That's the trouble," bitterly. "I don't know."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURAmanthus stopped by one afternoon a week later, to see Selina. If Adele was entirely occupied in going to luncheons, dinners and cotillions, where she did not shine, so that Selina saw little of her, Amanthus was equally occupied in going to these same affairs, where she did shine, and Selina saw less of her.She was returning from a luncheon now, lovely child, and a fawn-colored hat set off her hair and face, and a fawn-colored wrap enveloped her. She had come by with a message."But first I ought to say, Mr. Verily Blanke and Mr. Doe sent back polite messages. I haven't seen you since the day Mamma and I spent with them at my uncle's stock-farm. They're going out as far as California while they're in this country, stopping everywhere, and up into Canada. They don't go back to England before next summer. If Mamma and I go east to her cousin's summer place, we'll see them again at Bar Harbor. And, Selina, Mr. Doe says everybody in London, to the plainest and the ugliest, even the princesses royal, have bangs. He wasn't talking about horses as I thought at first, butabout people. Mamma says bangs are copied from a doubtful person, an actress, and she's not sure she wants to see me have them. And that brings me to what I came for. And first, may I go out to the mirror in the hat-tree and fix my hat on better? It feels crooked and I'm going from here to pay a party call."She went out to the glass and talked back from this point as she resettled her hat. "Mamma is trying this new thing, of serving tea in the afternoon, as perhaps you know, Selina. She thought my coming-out winter was a good time to begin it. It was while you were away we started it, and she wants you and Maud and Juliette and Adele to come for a cup to-morrow."Selina very ardently adored Mrs. Harrison and an invitation from her was a privilege."There's sure to be some men drop by, too, now it's getting to be understood about it," explained Amanthus coming back into the parlor, "your Mr. Tate, for one," as though this person in kind were a creature entirely peculiar to Selina's world and unclassified in hers, "ever since we asked him to our dance in fact. Lately Mr. Welling and Mr. Cannon and Culpepper have been coming, too, as if they do it to plague him. He told them real testily, the last time, he wished they would not follow him around.""That's why they do it," said Selina, even while she was adapting herself to this new and surprisingviewpoint of Culpepper and his group, habitués at Mrs. Harrison's!Amanthus rather unexpectedly resented this imputation on Mr. Tate. She replied almost sharply, "I like Mr. Tate myself, though I suppose he comes more to see Mamma. He talks to me about the Caesars and the Atlantic cable and Garfield. You think I don't know how the rest of you, Maud and every one of you, change the subject when I come and talk down to me, but I do."True enough, every word of this indictment! And true also that Mr. Tate did talk to Amanthus and Amanthus was pleased that he should."Shall I tell Mamma you'll come, Selina?""Oh, always, Amanthus, you know I'd never decline a chance to be where your mother is."The next afternoon, Selina went downstairs in best dress, coat, hat and gloves, to join Adele come by for her and waiting on the doorstep outside in velvet coat, velvet hat and furs against a background of early dusk and spitting snow. As they neared the Harrison house at the other end of the block, a brick dwelling with a slate mansard, sitting high in its trim corner yard, they saw Maud and Juliette on the steps. Maud in hunter's green, and Juliette still wan of cheek, but as if a bit defiantly, tricked out in brave scarlet. Hurrying they joined the two as Hetty, the maid, opened the door."They found Mrs. Harrison ... before the open fire."Ushered in they found Mrs. Harrison in the second of the two parlors in a big and comfortable chair before the open fire. They loved her fair hair drawn in water waves about her brow and temples; they loved her flowing apricot-toned cashmere with its fichu and hand ruffles and its touches of blue; they loved her fine and frankly beautiful face.They long had known her story, too, from their elders. A rich girl, raised by her uncle, owner of the Selimcroft stock-farm, she had married a man considerably her senior, a person of charm and much social note, who bringing her here to this community, had wasted her property in shocking fashion in his own behalf, and practiced economy almost to scandal upon her. Since his death when Amanthus was a bit of thing, she had managed the wreck of her affairs herself, prudently and thriftily, bringing herself and her child to where they were.Mrs. Harrison laid her book on the table by her as the group came in. She, without being aware of it, was advocate and sponsor for much of their present reading, a recently heard of English writer, one Hardy, being the latest met with at her hands, she claiming for him a new departure in heroines. "A Pair of Blue Eyes," was the volume she was laying down now, as their quick eyes saw. By the end of the week, some one of them would have secured it from the circulating library, and the four would have read it, too. In what way were these heroines of this Hardy new in departure? Just what did Mrs. Harrison mean? Was Hardy defending them in their types because they were what the world had madethem? These were the questions the four asked each other after reading each volume."Well, my dears! Let Hetty have your wraps and come and join me. Amanthus is the victim of her own pertinacity. I gave in at last this morning and agreed she might go down to Miss Lucy at the hair-store and have her hair shingled into a bang. With every one of you now snipping surreptitiously at her hair more and more each day—yes, you well may blush, Maud, you bear the proofs upon you—we opposing elders may as well give in and let you have your bangs. The deed being done, Amanthus had to rush downtown again this afternoon with Mary, the upstairs maid, carrying band-boxes, every hat she owns proving too big in the crown from this cropped arrangement. She'll be in presently. I'm glad to have you to myself this bit."They came flocking back after depositing their coats, and found seats about the fire as near to her as might be. They loved her hands which were white and shapely and well cared for. They loved her generous comprehendings and her unfailing appreciations. They knew, for example, that she already would have noted and with pleasure in the noting, that Adele's new ruche was becoming, that Maud was wearing her first man-tailored suit, that Juliette's scarlet box-coat just removed, was fetching, that Selina in her cashmere that was open a bit at the throat, had lowered her abundant hair to a Langtry knot at the nape of her pretty neck, if her motherwouldn't let her have a Langtry bang over her forehead."Amanthus told Selina we talk down to her, Mrs. Harrison," burst forth little Juliette. "Though I can't see why, with her dozen to our one of every sort of thing, she should care. We felt we'd have to tell you.""That I might absolve you?" smiled Mrs. Harrison. "Amanthus is a dear goose, a very dear but palpable goose."Did this lovely lady with the sweet and even pityingly tender eyes pause here, as with one deliberating, and in resuming, speak as to a seen end? Or was she by chance a Medea sowing dragon's teeth for these of her own sex from which should spring the discontents of the future?"Amanthus is a dear goose," slowly, "but has it occurred to you alert young people, that so long as things are as they are for us women, so long as our only avenue to place and establishment continues to be through marriage, Amanthus is the enviable one among us, the one forever safe and contentedly sweet and insured within the confines of her own docility and femininity, the one that will never rebel, the one that will never ask why? And that as things are as they are, we perhaps should be the more rejoiced to have Amanthus as she is.""So long as things are as they are?" "So long as our only avenue to place and establishment continues to be through marriage?"This group of four young people looked at Mrs. Harrison startled, and as though not sure they quite were getting her meaning.The outer door was heard to open and close, and Amanthus quite literally blew in, snow-sprinkled and wind-tossed, Amanthus who brought into dim rooms the golden effulgence of youth and radiance and beauty, Amanthus, the forever safe and contentedly sweet and insured.She tossed off her big, softly plumed beaver hat, and behold, she was shingled to her yellow crown! But also, she was in despair."Mamma—girls, I'm so glad to see you—I was reading the fashion-paper I bought on the way, while I waited at the milliner's. It's too discouraging. It says Queen Victoria has tabooed bangs. What sort do you suppose tabooed bangs are? The latest thing I suppose! And here, just to-day, I've had mine shingled into Langtry ones!""And yet," said Mrs. Harrison laughing, even if tenderly, and drawing Amanthus down to her and kissing her, the while she gave a look all whimsical to the others across the yellow-head, "and yet, in the name of every one of us, why would we have her one whit different?"What did Mrs. Harrison mean? Why was she thus including them and not Amanthus in these implications and indictments? The four looked at each other, non-plussed and wondering, and for some reason just the least bit disturbed.

Amanthus stopped by one afternoon a week later, to see Selina. If Adele was entirely occupied in going to luncheons, dinners and cotillions, where she did not shine, so that Selina saw little of her, Amanthus was equally occupied in going to these same affairs, where she did shine, and Selina saw less of her.

She was returning from a luncheon now, lovely child, and a fawn-colored hat set off her hair and face, and a fawn-colored wrap enveloped her. She had come by with a message.

"But first I ought to say, Mr. Verily Blanke and Mr. Doe sent back polite messages. I haven't seen you since the day Mamma and I spent with them at my uncle's stock-farm. They're going out as far as California while they're in this country, stopping everywhere, and up into Canada. They don't go back to England before next summer. If Mamma and I go east to her cousin's summer place, we'll see them again at Bar Harbor. And, Selina, Mr. Doe says everybody in London, to the plainest and the ugliest, even the princesses royal, have bangs. He wasn't talking about horses as I thought at first, butabout people. Mamma says bangs are copied from a doubtful person, an actress, and she's not sure she wants to see me have them. And that brings me to what I came for. And first, may I go out to the mirror in the hat-tree and fix my hat on better? It feels crooked and I'm going from here to pay a party call."

She went out to the glass and talked back from this point as she resettled her hat. "Mamma is trying this new thing, of serving tea in the afternoon, as perhaps you know, Selina. She thought my coming-out winter was a good time to begin it. It was while you were away we started it, and she wants you and Maud and Juliette and Adele to come for a cup to-morrow."

Selina very ardently adored Mrs. Harrison and an invitation from her was a privilege.

"There's sure to be some men drop by, too, now it's getting to be understood about it," explained Amanthus coming back into the parlor, "your Mr. Tate, for one," as though this person in kind were a creature entirely peculiar to Selina's world and unclassified in hers, "ever since we asked him to our dance in fact. Lately Mr. Welling and Mr. Cannon and Culpepper have been coming, too, as if they do it to plague him. He told them real testily, the last time, he wished they would not follow him around."

"That's why they do it," said Selina, even while she was adapting herself to this new and surprisingviewpoint of Culpepper and his group, habitués at Mrs. Harrison's!

Amanthus rather unexpectedly resented this imputation on Mr. Tate. She replied almost sharply, "I like Mr. Tate myself, though I suppose he comes more to see Mamma. He talks to me about the Caesars and the Atlantic cable and Garfield. You think I don't know how the rest of you, Maud and every one of you, change the subject when I come and talk down to me, but I do."

True enough, every word of this indictment! And true also that Mr. Tate did talk to Amanthus and Amanthus was pleased that he should.

"Shall I tell Mamma you'll come, Selina?"

"Oh, always, Amanthus, you know I'd never decline a chance to be where your mother is."

The next afternoon, Selina went downstairs in best dress, coat, hat and gloves, to join Adele come by for her and waiting on the doorstep outside in velvet coat, velvet hat and furs against a background of early dusk and spitting snow. As they neared the Harrison house at the other end of the block, a brick dwelling with a slate mansard, sitting high in its trim corner yard, they saw Maud and Juliette on the steps. Maud in hunter's green, and Juliette still wan of cheek, but as if a bit defiantly, tricked out in brave scarlet. Hurrying they joined the two as Hetty, the maid, opened the door.

"They found Mrs. Harrison ... before the open fire."

"They found Mrs. Harrison ... before the open fire."

"They found Mrs. Harrison ... before the open fire."

Ushered in they found Mrs. Harrison in the second of the two parlors in a big and comfortable chair before the open fire. They loved her fair hair drawn in water waves about her brow and temples; they loved her flowing apricot-toned cashmere with its fichu and hand ruffles and its touches of blue; they loved her fine and frankly beautiful face.

They long had known her story, too, from their elders. A rich girl, raised by her uncle, owner of the Selimcroft stock-farm, she had married a man considerably her senior, a person of charm and much social note, who bringing her here to this community, had wasted her property in shocking fashion in his own behalf, and practiced economy almost to scandal upon her. Since his death when Amanthus was a bit of thing, she had managed the wreck of her affairs herself, prudently and thriftily, bringing herself and her child to where they were.

Mrs. Harrison laid her book on the table by her as the group came in. She, without being aware of it, was advocate and sponsor for much of their present reading, a recently heard of English writer, one Hardy, being the latest met with at her hands, she claiming for him a new departure in heroines. "A Pair of Blue Eyes," was the volume she was laying down now, as their quick eyes saw. By the end of the week, some one of them would have secured it from the circulating library, and the four would have read it, too. In what way were these heroines of this Hardy new in departure? Just what did Mrs. Harrison mean? Was Hardy defending them in their types because they were what the world had madethem? These were the questions the four asked each other after reading each volume.

"Well, my dears! Let Hetty have your wraps and come and join me. Amanthus is the victim of her own pertinacity. I gave in at last this morning and agreed she might go down to Miss Lucy at the hair-store and have her hair shingled into a bang. With every one of you now snipping surreptitiously at her hair more and more each day—yes, you well may blush, Maud, you bear the proofs upon you—we opposing elders may as well give in and let you have your bangs. The deed being done, Amanthus had to rush downtown again this afternoon with Mary, the upstairs maid, carrying band-boxes, every hat she owns proving too big in the crown from this cropped arrangement. She'll be in presently. I'm glad to have you to myself this bit."

They came flocking back after depositing their coats, and found seats about the fire as near to her as might be. They loved her hands which were white and shapely and well cared for. They loved her generous comprehendings and her unfailing appreciations. They knew, for example, that she already would have noted and with pleasure in the noting, that Adele's new ruche was becoming, that Maud was wearing her first man-tailored suit, that Juliette's scarlet box-coat just removed, was fetching, that Selina in her cashmere that was open a bit at the throat, had lowered her abundant hair to a Langtry knot at the nape of her pretty neck, if her motherwouldn't let her have a Langtry bang over her forehead.

"Amanthus told Selina we talk down to her, Mrs. Harrison," burst forth little Juliette. "Though I can't see why, with her dozen to our one of every sort of thing, she should care. We felt we'd have to tell you."

"That I might absolve you?" smiled Mrs. Harrison. "Amanthus is a dear goose, a very dear but palpable goose."

Did this lovely lady with the sweet and even pityingly tender eyes pause here, as with one deliberating, and in resuming, speak as to a seen end? Or was she by chance a Medea sowing dragon's teeth for these of her own sex from which should spring the discontents of the future?

"Amanthus is a dear goose," slowly, "but has it occurred to you alert young people, that so long as things are as they are for us women, so long as our only avenue to place and establishment continues to be through marriage, Amanthus is the enviable one among us, the one forever safe and contentedly sweet and insured within the confines of her own docility and femininity, the one that will never rebel, the one that will never ask why? And that as things are as they are, we perhaps should be the more rejoiced to have Amanthus as she is."

"So long as things are as they are?" "So long as our only avenue to place and establishment continues to be through marriage?"

This group of four young people looked at Mrs. Harrison startled, and as though not sure they quite were getting her meaning.

The outer door was heard to open and close, and Amanthus quite literally blew in, snow-sprinkled and wind-tossed, Amanthus who brought into dim rooms the golden effulgence of youth and radiance and beauty, Amanthus, the forever safe and contentedly sweet and insured.

She tossed off her big, softly plumed beaver hat, and behold, she was shingled to her yellow crown! But also, she was in despair.

"Mamma—girls, I'm so glad to see you—I was reading the fashion-paper I bought on the way, while I waited at the milliner's. It's too discouraging. It says Queen Victoria has tabooed bangs. What sort do you suppose tabooed bangs are? The latest thing I suppose! And here, just to-day, I've had mine shingled into Langtry ones!"

"And yet," said Mrs. Harrison laughing, even if tenderly, and drawing Amanthus down to her and kissing her, the while she gave a look all whimsical to the others across the yellow-head, "and yet, in the name of every one of us, why would we have her one whit different?"

What did Mrs. Harrison mean? Why was she thus including them and not Amanthus in these implications and indictments? The four looked at each other, non-plussed and wondering, and for some reason just the least bit disturbed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVEHere Mr. Tate was shown in by Hetty. He was exceedingly tall and his cheek-bones were prominent, and so was his earnestness. His skirted coat seemed ponderous and so did he.Maud, for one, never had cared for Mr. Tate, possibly because he seemed so little aware of her. She was in a gloomy frame of mind anyway, not having cheered up since, so she put it, she'd seen herself as Mr. Welling and his sex saw her. She said afterwards, that this afternoon at the Harrisons only confirmed the point of view. Mr. Tate in his frock coat and his earnestness seemed to provide an outlet for her immediate ill-humor."When a person's dressed with all that excess of correctness, he only looks ridiculous," she told Selina, by whom she was sitting.Amanthus apparently did not think so. She smiled for Mr. Tate and that marvel of a dimple showed and she gave him her soft hand. Mrs. Harrison smiled for him, too, and offered a hand and told him that she and Amanthus had enjoyed his matinée tickets hugely."He's never offered us matinée tickets," sottovoce from Maud at Selina's elbow. "That earnestness of his keeps its eye on exactly what it wants and doesn't waste itself elsewhere. He's recognizing we're here now and he's coming to tell us so. That's something to be grateful for."He shook hands with Adele and called her Miss Adelina. She and her identity always seemed vague to him. He shook hands with Selina and asked her about her mother and her aunt; he shook hands with Juliette. He came to Maud. Her attitude to him at times savored of belligerency. She wasn't fond of persons who ignored her, but as she explained afterward, she hardly had flattered herself he'd noticed this manner."Miss Maud," Mr. Tate having said this in recognition of her as he put out his hand, paused, then said the name over again as if struck for the first time with the sound and significance of it. "MissMaud?" consideringly and reflectively. "There's something then in names? Juliette now," with a beneficent wave of the hand in the direction of that pretty, dark, little person, "diminutive of Julia; Amanda, Amanthus, and the further derivatives," he turned and bowed gallantly in the direction of this young lady, "worthy to be loved—Matilda, Matilde, Maud—mighty battle maid."Perhaps it was fortunate that Hetty came in here, this time ushering Mr. Welling, Mr. Cannon and Culpepper. They seemed to bring in with them the bracing of the outside cold and something of its vigoras to a man they rallied about their hostess, their spirits effervescent."We had your note," from Mr. Cannon, the good-looking and the debonaire, cheerfully."We've primed ourselves with the law on the subject of cook-ladies and their husbands and their wages," from Culpepper genially."We were pricking Tate, old man, into coming this afternoon anyway, before we heard from you, to give us an excuse for following him," from Mr. Welling."Tate's been right testy because you asked us instead of him for that advice. He prefers to think the whole lien on things around here is his," from Mr. Cannon.They came about the room now shaking hands generally."You here, Selina? That's good," from Culpepper."And you won't forgive me, Miss Maud?" from Mr. Welling to this energetically handsome young lady in her cloth suit of hunter's green. "Won't believe me that my motives, far from trying to win you over to my democracy, were unmixed and pure? Wouldn't see me when I called the other evening! Haven't answered my pleading note! I appeal to you, Mrs. Harrison. I've a question in ethics, moral, social and otherwise that Miss Amanthus once told me about. Or perhaps I'd better put it direct to Miss Maud.Will a lady say she's out whenshe's in?I'm coming around again to satisfy myself as to this, to-morrow night."And meanwhile did Mr. Cannon—perish the thought!—approximate a wink at Adele as he approached her? At Adele who when she used to sportively skip rope did it with such painful conscientiousness one's heart ached to watch her? At Adele who constitutionally would be so embarrassed with a wink thus placed on her hands, one could not figure out the consequences? Certainly this Mr. Preston Cannon the naughty did something with an eyelid quite confidentially as he reached her. And who pray had told him of his recent double identity in connection with the Carter reception?"The vagabond interloper is discovered in the cherished nephew," he was saying jocularly to Adele whose face was scarlet.But even so, despite this effervescence of good spirits bestowed around, the younger ladies could not deceive themselves. The gentlemen were glad to find them here, of course, but incidentally, their own coming and their own ardor being for Mrs. Harrison!For the third time Hetty appeared, now bringing in the tea and its accompaniments, which she put down on a table before Mrs. Harrison.Whereupon the gentlemen rallied to their hostess again, rallied with a zest and heartiness that spelled homage. Culpepper at the table by her elbow, with the silver tongs suspended above the silver sugar bowl, waited her word to distribute the cubes tosaucers. Culpepper—the blunt and self-avowed scorner of the lady's man!Mr. Welling went about carrying cups. According to Maud's undertones to Selina, his facetious speeches as he distributed these merely sounded excessive."And silly," she added a moment later to the first indictment.It was his speech calling attention to the gracious occupation of the hostess at the tea-table, that provoked this last comment."Juno, to human needs sweetly descent, pours tea," Mr. Welling diagramed it, as he handed Maud a cup of the brew."He mails mental pabulum to me, and bestows compliments elsewhere," she remarked scathingly as he moved on.Amanthus, artless sight, her shingled yellow bang altogether fetching, followed in the wake of Mr. Welling, with cakes in a silver basket. He called back gallantly over his shoulder diagraming her, too."Hebe to the children of earth," he explained.It was nauseating, that is if one agreed with Maud.Mr. Tate followed after the cups and the cakes with lemon and with cream. It was a risk to let him. He earnestly and even decorously stumbled over a rug and slopped the cream, and as earnestly and decorously looked annoyed and recovered himself. He also made rejoinder to Mr. Welling."Juno and Hebe, if you will, Henry," he was theonly known soul apparently who addressed this gentleman by his Christian name, "except that in both cases, our Juno and our Hebe are first and last and always, radiantly and commendably, woman!""He ... stumbled over a rug and slopped the cream."Selina who earlier in the afternoon felt she was looking her best in her cashmere with its open throat and the knot of her hair at the nape of her neck, butwas less fondly hopeful about it now, took her tea from Mr. Welling, her cake from Amanthus, her cream from Mr. Tate, but something of her state of mind from Maud.She did not care for tea. If the truth be told, while she was a little sensitive about the childish look of the thing, a goblet of milk still stood at her plate three times a day, Mamma discouraging even a tentative cup of coffee at breakfast. But it was not her lack of ardor for the tea now in her hand which was dampening her spirits, but the realization that she and her companions were but incidents to a foreground adequately filled for these young gentlemen.A foreground not even shared by Amanthus, but filled altogether by Mrs. Harrison, beautiful, smiling, and serene, too big, too adequate, too honest and too real to put forward one charm, one attribute deliberately to invite such recognition.Too big, too honest and too real? Selina caught at the words as they passed through her mind. Could the secret lie in these? Auntie had deplored the borrowed furbelows with deep distress. Were she and her group paying the penalty of trying to be what they were not?These young gentlemen whose good opinions the group yearned to possess, bantered them instead with jocularity, and gave sincerity and admiration to Mrs. Harrison. If Selina could judge, it was the same nature of homage men offered to Miss PocahontasBoswell, that most natural and unassuming of persons.Had Selina laid bare the secret? For was not Mrs. Harrison nobly and simply herself? Each charm and each loveliness taking its toll rightfully her own? And her interests and her occupations and her reading, her assumptions and her opinions, were not these too gently and quietly her own?She had faced about from the tea-table now, her own cup in hand and was speaking. How lovely her fair hair was, how pleasing the apricot tones of her dress! And Mamma and Auntie said there was no degradation a husband might descend to that her money was not taken to pay for, no price a humiliated young wife could be taxed, her personal fortune did not stand voucher for! Why should a woman permit it? Why not consider her own to be her own, in such a case? Selina, looking at Mrs. Harrison, wondered.She herself was speaking. "And now about old colored Aunt Hosanna in my kitchen. She has a lazy, ne'er-do-well husband, girls, though I've probably mentioned it before to you, who as regularly as the week-end rolls around, appears and collects her week's wages for her. I have asked to be assured by these young lawyers-to-be, that he has every right to do it, before I give in to him any longer.""He has every right," from Mr. Welling, square-set now like his spectacles, and earnest and definite. "The common law, covering the law of husband andwife, has been modified in some of the states, but here in our own, is practically unchanged.""Culpepper," from Mrs. Harrison still playing with her tea-cup, to this black-haired, blue-eyed young gentleman in a chair to her left, "you promised to look up the case of that little dressmaker for me. Don't think I hunt these things. By some force of attraction seemingly, they seek me."Culpepper took advantage of the opportunity to put his cup down. Its undiminished contents would indicate that he didn't care for tea as a beverage either. He, too, was business-like and definite."I took the address you gave me," he said, "and went around to see her carpenter husband. She's temporarily left him since you saw her. He admits the house was bought and paid for by her out of her earnings before he knew her. And he admits he mistreats her every time he's drunk. But the house and its contents he proposes to keep if she leaves him.""She lost three sewing-machines once before," said Mrs. Harrison, "and a piano she'd bought by installments that was the joy and pride of her life. They were seized a week after she married him three years ago to settle debts he had contracted before he knew her."Mr. Cannon came into the conversation. Nor was he in the least the jollying, bandying person the younger ladies were familiar with."Which is proof of where he on his part puts us, too," murmured Maud."You women, Mrs. Harrison, so seldom take the protection offered you in the ante-nuptial or marriage settlement provisions. We've just been remarking on it among ourselves, the rich women seldom, the working-woman never."Mrs. Harrison played with the spoon in her saucer, as if considering before answering. She had been holding her cup now for some time."Put it down," said Mr. Welling from his stand near the fender, persuasively; "you haven't tasted it.""No more have you yours," retorted his hostess, "nor Selina, nor Maud, nor Culpepper nor Juliette—I don't like tea myself, and I don't believe one of the rest of you do."There was relaxation at this, and general confession, and a setting down of cups."Tea as a function is more popular than tea as a beverage," from Mr. Welling, gallantly.Mrs. Harrison reached for her tatting which lay near her book. "You say, Mr. Cannon, you wonder women so seldom take advantage of the marriage settlement provisions?" Her eyes glancing from one to the other of the young girls grouped about her fireside and then returning to Mr. Cannon seemed to say, "Here are cases in possible point to be. Consider them."What she said, however, was, "How many young girls, even in the class you know, are likely to haveheard of an ante-nuptial provision? Or as things go in our American life, would conceive any need of protection in her own case? American women usually marry for affection, which implies faith. Though the real truth is, we're not apt to think about marriage in any sense such as this at all, having been trained neither to the knowledge nor the thinking. I take it, Mr. Cannon," smiling, "that you will make it your business to instruct the young lady of your choice in these points beforehand?"Mr. Cannon laughed, but he got red, too.Was Mrs. Harrison too honest thus to be sowing insubordination in the camps of the possible future and not acknowledge it? She put her tatting down."I am not attacking the institution of marriage in the least, Maudie and Juliette, Selina, Adele and my Amanthus. I am not attacking it at all; I am repudiating woman's helplessness within the institution. Adele knows more of what I am talking about, I see it in her eyes. Adele is a browser among books.""Mills on 'The Subjection of Woman,'" murmured Mr. Cannon still red. "This my defence. I lent it to her."Hetty appeared again, this time ushering Bliss and Mr. Tuttle Jones."Oh," from Amanthus, "ifyou knew how glad I am to see you both. They've been talking and talking, and are still talking, and I haven't been able to make out one thing of what they think they're talking about."Bliss ruddy-haired and pretty boy, hurried to her side, his face alight at the welcome. Bliss was twenty-one now, and his father had given him a wee interest in a box factory, and he was up and gone from home by half-past six in the mornings, and was tremendously proud and in earnest and interested, and very much in love with Amanthus.Mr. Jones, his neat person and neat features and small moustache immaculate, finished his greetings without a shade of hurry, then made his way to Selina. Maud had wandered away now, and he took the place she had vacated. Whereupon the color began to rise in Selina's cheek, warm and permeating, and rich. For the eyes of Mr. Jones were sweeping over her face, her brow, her hair, even to the pale burnished knot at the nape of her neck, and sweeping back again over the whole. There were other masculine eyes that might have been doing the same that had declined their prerogative."I knew the style was yours when I asked you to try it" murmured Tuttle.The color flamed higher."Mamma and I had cards to-day from your sister, Mrs. Sampson, for her next afternoon. It was nice of her to think of us," from Selina.Selina and her mother did not know Mrs. Sampson."Promise me to accept and go," from Tuttle, earnestly. "A real promise I want. Exactly. Now Ihave it. I want you to know my people better, and my people to know you."What could the color do at a speech such as this, but wave almost painfully, higher and even higher?"Oh, I must tell you, by the way, your aunt, Mrs. Bruce came in the bank to-day to see me. She fancies she owes me some sort of thanks about her husband, which, of course, she doesn't at all. That off her mind, she asked me if I could give her any reasonable idea of how many women in town had a vault box, or if I could tell her how to find out how many have bank-books. What do you suppose?"Selina had a nice voice, clear and sweet and when she was happy and merry, full of cadences. It rang silvery in its notes now. "I don't suppose. Nobody does when it's Aunt Juanita. Mamma says she's been hunting information of various kinds about women for fifteen years."It was such a wonderfully pleasing thing to hear that silvery laugh, Tuttle Jones set about awakening it again.*******About the time cloaks were being sought, Culpepper came strolling to hunt Selina."I'll walk back with you," he said easily.We're all pitiable and ignoble, which is to say, human creatures. If Selina had admitted the slightest feeling of chagrin earlier in the evening, that feeling found satisfaction now. Moreover, she was looking that very best of hers again, which meansshe was sparkling and coloring and laughing, a thing calculated to increase one's satisfaction. She gave Culpepper a share of this sparkle and this color as she replied:"Mr. Jones is going to take me home, thank you, Culpepper. He says it's quite dark and snowing fast."

Here Mr. Tate was shown in by Hetty. He was exceedingly tall and his cheek-bones were prominent, and so was his earnestness. His skirted coat seemed ponderous and so did he.

Maud, for one, never had cared for Mr. Tate, possibly because he seemed so little aware of her. She was in a gloomy frame of mind anyway, not having cheered up since, so she put it, she'd seen herself as Mr. Welling and his sex saw her. She said afterwards, that this afternoon at the Harrisons only confirmed the point of view. Mr. Tate in his frock coat and his earnestness seemed to provide an outlet for her immediate ill-humor.

"When a person's dressed with all that excess of correctness, he only looks ridiculous," she told Selina, by whom she was sitting.

Amanthus apparently did not think so. She smiled for Mr. Tate and that marvel of a dimple showed and she gave him her soft hand. Mrs. Harrison smiled for him, too, and offered a hand and told him that she and Amanthus had enjoyed his matinée tickets hugely.

"He's never offered us matinée tickets," sottovoce from Maud at Selina's elbow. "That earnestness of his keeps its eye on exactly what it wants and doesn't waste itself elsewhere. He's recognizing we're here now and he's coming to tell us so. That's something to be grateful for."

He shook hands with Adele and called her Miss Adelina. She and her identity always seemed vague to him. He shook hands with Selina and asked her about her mother and her aunt; he shook hands with Juliette. He came to Maud. Her attitude to him at times savored of belligerency. She wasn't fond of persons who ignored her, but as she explained afterward, she hardly had flattered herself he'd noticed this manner.

"Miss Maud," Mr. Tate having said this in recognition of her as he put out his hand, paused, then said the name over again as if struck for the first time with the sound and significance of it. "MissMaud?" consideringly and reflectively. "There's something then in names? Juliette now," with a beneficent wave of the hand in the direction of that pretty, dark, little person, "diminutive of Julia; Amanda, Amanthus, and the further derivatives," he turned and bowed gallantly in the direction of this young lady, "worthy to be loved—Matilda, Matilde, Maud—mighty battle maid."

Perhaps it was fortunate that Hetty came in here, this time ushering Mr. Welling, Mr. Cannon and Culpepper. They seemed to bring in with them the bracing of the outside cold and something of its vigoras to a man they rallied about their hostess, their spirits effervescent.

"We had your note," from Mr. Cannon, the good-looking and the debonaire, cheerfully.

"We've primed ourselves with the law on the subject of cook-ladies and their husbands and their wages," from Culpepper genially.

"We were pricking Tate, old man, into coming this afternoon anyway, before we heard from you, to give us an excuse for following him," from Mr. Welling.

"Tate's been right testy because you asked us instead of him for that advice. He prefers to think the whole lien on things around here is his," from Mr. Cannon.

They came about the room now shaking hands generally.

"You here, Selina? That's good," from Culpepper.

"And you won't forgive me, Miss Maud?" from Mr. Welling to this energetically handsome young lady in her cloth suit of hunter's green. "Won't believe me that my motives, far from trying to win you over to my democracy, were unmixed and pure? Wouldn't see me when I called the other evening! Haven't answered my pleading note! I appeal to you, Mrs. Harrison. I've a question in ethics, moral, social and otherwise that Miss Amanthus once told me about. Or perhaps I'd better put it direct to Miss Maud.Will a lady say she's out whenshe's in?I'm coming around again to satisfy myself as to this, to-morrow night."

And meanwhile did Mr. Cannon—perish the thought!—approximate a wink at Adele as he approached her? At Adele who when she used to sportively skip rope did it with such painful conscientiousness one's heart ached to watch her? At Adele who constitutionally would be so embarrassed with a wink thus placed on her hands, one could not figure out the consequences? Certainly this Mr. Preston Cannon the naughty did something with an eyelid quite confidentially as he reached her. And who pray had told him of his recent double identity in connection with the Carter reception?

"The vagabond interloper is discovered in the cherished nephew," he was saying jocularly to Adele whose face was scarlet.

But even so, despite this effervescence of good spirits bestowed around, the younger ladies could not deceive themselves. The gentlemen were glad to find them here, of course, but incidentally, their own coming and their own ardor being for Mrs. Harrison!

For the third time Hetty appeared, now bringing in the tea and its accompaniments, which she put down on a table before Mrs. Harrison.

Whereupon the gentlemen rallied to their hostess again, rallied with a zest and heartiness that spelled homage. Culpepper at the table by her elbow, with the silver tongs suspended above the silver sugar bowl, waited her word to distribute the cubes tosaucers. Culpepper—the blunt and self-avowed scorner of the lady's man!

Mr. Welling went about carrying cups. According to Maud's undertones to Selina, his facetious speeches as he distributed these merely sounded excessive.

"And silly," she added a moment later to the first indictment.

It was his speech calling attention to the gracious occupation of the hostess at the tea-table, that provoked this last comment.

"Juno, to human needs sweetly descent, pours tea," Mr. Welling diagramed it, as he handed Maud a cup of the brew.

"He mails mental pabulum to me, and bestows compliments elsewhere," she remarked scathingly as he moved on.

Amanthus, artless sight, her shingled yellow bang altogether fetching, followed in the wake of Mr. Welling, with cakes in a silver basket. He called back gallantly over his shoulder diagraming her, too.

"Hebe to the children of earth," he explained.

It was nauseating, that is if one agreed with Maud.

Mr. Tate followed after the cups and the cakes with lemon and with cream. It was a risk to let him. He earnestly and even decorously stumbled over a rug and slopped the cream, and as earnestly and decorously looked annoyed and recovered himself. He also made rejoinder to Mr. Welling.

"Juno and Hebe, if you will, Henry," he was theonly known soul apparently who addressed this gentleman by his Christian name, "except that in both cases, our Juno and our Hebe are first and last and always, radiantly and commendably, woman!"

"He ... stumbled over a rug and slopped the cream."

"He ... stumbled over a rug and slopped the cream."

"He ... stumbled over a rug and slopped the cream."

Selina who earlier in the afternoon felt she was looking her best in her cashmere with its open throat and the knot of her hair at the nape of her neck, butwas less fondly hopeful about it now, took her tea from Mr. Welling, her cake from Amanthus, her cream from Mr. Tate, but something of her state of mind from Maud.

She did not care for tea. If the truth be told, while she was a little sensitive about the childish look of the thing, a goblet of milk still stood at her plate three times a day, Mamma discouraging even a tentative cup of coffee at breakfast. But it was not her lack of ardor for the tea now in her hand which was dampening her spirits, but the realization that she and her companions were but incidents to a foreground adequately filled for these young gentlemen.

A foreground not even shared by Amanthus, but filled altogether by Mrs. Harrison, beautiful, smiling, and serene, too big, too adequate, too honest and too real to put forward one charm, one attribute deliberately to invite such recognition.

Too big, too honest and too real? Selina caught at the words as they passed through her mind. Could the secret lie in these? Auntie had deplored the borrowed furbelows with deep distress. Were she and her group paying the penalty of trying to be what they were not?

These young gentlemen whose good opinions the group yearned to possess, bantered them instead with jocularity, and gave sincerity and admiration to Mrs. Harrison. If Selina could judge, it was the same nature of homage men offered to Miss PocahontasBoswell, that most natural and unassuming of persons.

Had Selina laid bare the secret? For was not Mrs. Harrison nobly and simply herself? Each charm and each loveliness taking its toll rightfully her own? And her interests and her occupations and her reading, her assumptions and her opinions, were not these too gently and quietly her own?

She had faced about from the tea-table now, her own cup in hand and was speaking. How lovely her fair hair was, how pleasing the apricot tones of her dress! And Mamma and Auntie said there was no degradation a husband might descend to that her money was not taken to pay for, no price a humiliated young wife could be taxed, her personal fortune did not stand voucher for! Why should a woman permit it? Why not consider her own to be her own, in such a case? Selina, looking at Mrs. Harrison, wondered.

She herself was speaking. "And now about old colored Aunt Hosanna in my kitchen. She has a lazy, ne'er-do-well husband, girls, though I've probably mentioned it before to you, who as regularly as the week-end rolls around, appears and collects her week's wages for her. I have asked to be assured by these young lawyers-to-be, that he has every right to do it, before I give in to him any longer."

"He has every right," from Mr. Welling, square-set now like his spectacles, and earnest and definite. "The common law, covering the law of husband andwife, has been modified in some of the states, but here in our own, is practically unchanged."

"Culpepper," from Mrs. Harrison still playing with her tea-cup, to this black-haired, blue-eyed young gentleman in a chair to her left, "you promised to look up the case of that little dressmaker for me. Don't think I hunt these things. By some force of attraction seemingly, they seek me."

Culpepper took advantage of the opportunity to put his cup down. Its undiminished contents would indicate that he didn't care for tea as a beverage either. He, too, was business-like and definite.

"I took the address you gave me," he said, "and went around to see her carpenter husband. She's temporarily left him since you saw her. He admits the house was bought and paid for by her out of her earnings before he knew her. And he admits he mistreats her every time he's drunk. But the house and its contents he proposes to keep if she leaves him."

"She lost three sewing-machines once before," said Mrs. Harrison, "and a piano she'd bought by installments that was the joy and pride of her life. They were seized a week after she married him three years ago to settle debts he had contracted before he knew her."

Mr. Cannon came into the conversation. Nor was he in the least the jollying, bandying person the younger ladies were familiar with.

"Which is proof of where he on his part puts us, too," murmured Maud.

"You women, Mrs. Harrison, so seldom take the protection offered you in the ante-nuptial or marriage settlement provisions. We've just been remarking on it among ourselves, the rich women seldom, the working-woman never."

Mrs. Harrison played with the spoon in her saucer, as if considering before answering. She had been holding her cup now for some time.

"Put it down," said Mr. Welling from his stand near the fender, persuasively; "you haven't tasted it."

"No more have you yours," retorted his hostess, "nor Selina, nor Maud, nor Culpepper nor Juliette—I don't like tea myself, and I don't believe one of the rest of you do."

There was relaxation at this, and general confession, and a setting down of cups.

"Tea as a function is more popular than tea as a beverage," from Mr. Welling, gallantly.

Mrs. Harrison reached for her tatting which lay near her book. "You say, Mr. Cannon, you wonder women so seldom take advantage of the marriage settlement provisions?" Her eyes glancing from one to the other of the young girls grouped about her fireside and then returning to Mr. Cannon seemed to say, "Here are cases in possible point to be. Consider them."

What she said, however, was, "How many young girls, even in the class you know, are likely to haveheard of an ante-nuptial provision? Or as things go in our American life, would conceive any need of protection in her own case? American women usually marry for affection, which implies faith. Though the real truth is, we're not apt to think about marriage in any sense such as this at all, having been trained neither to the knowledge nor the thinking. I take it, Mr. Cannon," smiling, "that you will make it your business to instruct the young lady of your choice in these points beforehand?"

Mr. Cannon laughed, but he got red, too.

Was Mrs. Harrison too honest thus to be sowing insubordination in the camps of the possible future and not acknowledge it? She put her tatting down.

"I am not attacking the institution of marriage in the least, Maudie and Juliette, Selina, Adele and my Amanthus. I am not attacking it at all; I am repudiating woman's helplessness within the institution. Adele knows more of what I am talking about, I see it in her eyes. Adele is a browser among books."

"Mills on 'The Subjection of Woman,'" murmured Mr. Cannon still red. "This my defence. I lent it to her."

Hetty appeared again, this time ushering Bliss and Mr. Tuttle Jones.

"Oh," from Amanthus, "ifyou knew how glad I am to see you both. They've been talking and talking, and are still talking, and I haven't been able to make out one thing of what they think they're talking about."

Bliss ruddy-haired and pretty boy, hurried to her side, his face alight at the welcome. Bliss was twenty-one now, and his father had given him a wee interest in a box factory, and he was up and gone from home by half-past six in the mornings, and was tremendously proud and in earnest and interested, and very much in love with Amanthus.

Mr. Jones, his neat person and neat features and small moustache immaculate, finished his greetings without a shade of hurry, then made his way to Selina. Maud had wandered away now, and he took the place she had vacated. Whereupon the color began to rise in Selina's cheek, warm and permeating, and rich. For the eyes of Mr. Jones were sweeping over her face, her brow, her hair, even to the pale burnished knot at the nape of her neck, and sweeping back again over the whole. There were other masculine eyes that might have been doing the same that had declined their prerogative.

"I knew the style was yours when I asked you to try it" murmured Tuttle.

The color flamed higher.

"Mamma and I had cards to-day from your sister, Mrs. Sampson, for her next afternoon. It was nice of her to think of us," from Selina.

Selina and her mother did not know Mrs. Sampson.

"Promise me to accept and go," from Tuttle, earnestly. "A real promise I want. Exactly. Now Ihave it. I want you to know my people better, and my people to know you."

What could the color do at a speech such as this, but wave almost painfully, higher and even higher?

"Oh, I must tell you, by the way, your aunt, Mrs. Bruce came in the bank to-day to see me. She fancies she owes me some sort of thanks about her husband, which, of course, she doesn't at all. That off her mind, she asked me if I could give her any reasonable idea of how many women in town had a vault box, or if I could tell her how to find out how many have bank-books. What do you suppose?"

Selina had a nice voice, clear and sweet and when she was happy and merry, full of cadences. It rang silvery in its notes now. "I don't suppose. Nobody does when it's Aunt Juanita. Mamma says she's been hunting information of various kinds about women for fifteen years."

It was such a wonderfully pleasing thing to hear that silvery laugh, Tuttle Jones set about awakening it again.

About the time cloaks were being sought, Culpepper came strolling to hunt Selina.

"I'll walk back with you," he said easily.

We're all pitiable and ignoble, which is to say, human creatures. If Selina had admitted the slightest feeling of chagrin earlier in the evening, that feeling found satisfaction now. Moreover, she was looking that very best of hers again, which meansshe was sparkling and coloring and laughing, a thing calculated to increase one's satisfaction. She gave Culpepper a share of this sparkle and this color as she replied:

"Mr. Jones is going to take me home, thank you, Culpepper. He says it's quite dark and snowing fast."

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