That evening at the dinner table, Mamma looked around the castor and spoke briskly to Papa, tall and slight gentleman that he was, with temples hollowing a bit.

"We made a foolish miscalculation in the amount Selina is to receive for her teaching. We women are poor arithmeticians. With her lack of experience it is gratifying that she will be commanding the customary price as it is."

By this Selina understood that her father was to be spared as much of her disappointment as possible. She really owed this gentleman something on account in this teaching business, if she were given to considering money received from him after any such fashion. He had smilingly, at her mother's request, advanced the amount needed for books and other material for her teaching, and a second sum for carfare to the Williams' in bad weather. But these transactions were not on the mind of Selina at all. Just as the economic end rather than Aunt Viney was the thing considered by Mamma in the readjustment of the family wash, so Papa, as a source of supply was taken for granted by Selina. It would not have occurred to her, nor yet to Mamma or Auntie, or to any of the mothers and aunts and daughters whom they knew, that the sum of her earnings was offset by the amount advanced for her equipping. On the other hand Selina was loving, and quite understood that it should be the feelings of her father she must spare.

"The experience will mean everything," she claimed briskly and promptly to her mother's cue, "I ought to be glad to teach for nothing, I daresay, to get it."

Auntie looked alarmed at any such view of the matter. "I knew of an apprentice in my young days, our gardener's son, bound out for the experience in a rope-walk, who carried thirty-seven boils at one time from the mildewed cornmeal they fed him. I don't approve of anyone working for anybody for nothing. We're sure to undervalue what we don't pay the price for. It's a poor plan."

"How you wander," from Mamma.

"Not from my point," from Auntie stoutly. "I've made it."

After dinner Juliette and Maud who lived next door to each other, and Amanthus and Adele who lived at the opposite ends of the block, came in in a body. It was a way the group had of getting together at one house when there was nothing else especial on hand. They trooped gaily in, dropping their wraps in the hall and coming into the parlor. No more were they and Selina seated about the open grate fire and Auntie's burnished brasses, and prepared to talk volubly, than Culpepper walked in. He found a chair and joined the group.

"Judy and I," Maud was saying to Selina who was pale though nobody noticed this, "saw you starting out this morning to your teaching. We think if you'd coil your plaits round your head, instead of looping them, you'd look older."

"If four infant pupils bring in one swollen fortune," speculated Culpepper blandly, "how many fortunes, through how many infant pupils, is one Selina, now she's started, likely to amass?"

It was as well! The mistaken matter of such banter indeed was uppermost in Selina's thoughts. The minds of these five friends had to be disabused of their rosy misinformation about her earnings, and the sooner the better. Selina, who in general had a gay little way in talking to these friends, endeavored to take that way now.

"I've some interesting data about the market value of education with some other things," she said briskly. "I'm thinking I'd get rich sooner, Culpepper, if I abandoned pupils and decided to cook. I'll have to ask you to divide by four"—did Selina choke a little here?—"that Fortunatus salary I thought I was getting for teaching William and the others."

"Selina! Divide by four? What do you mean? Oh, I do wish," plaintively, "you all would ever say what it is you mean, plain out," from Amanthus.

"Selina!" from Adele, "Oh, I'm sorry!"

"Let me help you choose a better vocation if that's the case," indignantly from Maud. "Don't waste yourself on it."

"How did you make such a mistake, Selina? Or was it your mistake?" from Juliette.

"Mrs. Williams said I ought to have known what she meant, I should have investigated—" Selina thus was taking up the tale of it once more when she stopped.

"Yes?" from Culpepper. "We're waiting?"

But with a brisk air of not hearing him, Selina changed the subject. Her father whom she had forgotten was sitting in the back parlor with her mother and her aunt, had lowered his paper and was listening, too. By all the precedents and traditions of her up-bringing, it was hers to change the subject.

Her audience all were acquainted with the personnel of her little class of boys by now, for when Selina was interested in a thing she talked about it. They were familiar, too, with Auntie's grievance about the cranial peculiarity of William. The thing now was to turn the matter off with what Maudie would call sprightly nonchalance.

"William's head certainly is growing smaller, you must know," said Selina with gayety. "Isn't it some sort of reflection on me? As his teacher? I would have thought it would be the other way."

Culpepper from across the circle was looking at her with those boldly blue eyes of his, beneath half-raised lids. Papa's paper was lowered to his knee in the next room. Something was wrong, this brave gayety was assumed and they showed that they knew it was.

"Bluffed," said Culpepper still with that keen and appraising gaze upon her, "she's going to quit."

Papa's paper floated unnoticed from his knee to the floor. Was he listening for what was to come?

"I'm not," said Selina indignantly, stung by these attitudes as of watchers noting her on trial, "I've just begun."

"Still, it seems to me, Mrs. Williams was right," from little Judy here in the front room. "You ought to have investigated; you should have known for yourself. Somehow girls and women never seem to know for themselves. I wonder why?"

Mrs. Wistar's voice murmuring defensively came in from the next room. "I hardly follow you, Mr. Wistar! I'm sure it was harder on me than on Selina to have her so disappointed. No girl was ever more shielded than she has been from all possible disappointments, and such things, up to now, nor spared where it was possible to spare her!"

The murmuring voice in reply came from Auntie. "My father's mother with her eight children followed her husband, she by wagon, he on horseback, over the old wilderness road to settle here where this town is now. She learned to use a gun and an axe as well as she used a spinning wheel, because she had to. She bore him seven more children after they were here. Nobody spared women or children then. Maybe it's been our mistake to spare her too much, Lavinia."