When Selina returned from her first morning's teaching, she had much to tell. She almost felt she was growing sordid and mercenary herself. "When I got to Mrs. Williams', Mamma, I found three other pupils waiting for me."

"It's an ugly brick front, that house of the Williams', so tall and spare," said her mother, not just grasping what was significant in the information.

"Three more pupils it means, Mamma and Auntie, making four in all."

"I'm sure I'm glad she proved as good as her word," said Auntie. "I suppose because she needed the others to make up the class for her own child, she made those mothers feel it was entirely her interest in their children's welfare bringing it about. People always go down before that sort of zeal for their benefit. That's Amelia McIntosh, exactly!"

Selina tried again. She herself was tremendously excited. If when she arrived at the Williams' and found those four wide-eyed little boys awaiting her, her heart misgave her as to what she was going to do with them, she had no intention of telling it at home, and if damage seemed likely to be done at her novice hands to the innocent William and his equally innocent companions, she was not thinking of that part of it at all! What she was trying to make plain was of a different nature.

"Don't you realize what it means, Mamma? Four pupils at four dollars a pupil! Think of that, Auntie!"

They saw the point at last and dropping their sewing in their laps, sat up animated and excited.

"Four pupils at four dollars a pupil?" said Auntie. "That's how much for a week's teaching, Lavinia?" Auntie always succumbed before figures.

"Four and four's eight, and eight's sixteen," said Mamma, dazzled, "and multiply this sixteen by four again for a month's total—four t'm's six is twenty-four, four t'm's one is four and two to carry, is—! Selina, you must have a round-necked, real party dress now!" happily.

"And two to carry is what, Lavinia?" from Auntie anxiously. "Sixty-four dollars?" in answer to her sister-in-law's triumphant reply. "I can't believe it! Selina, you must have a hat with a soft feather, too!"

Selina was dazzled, too, but endeavoring to hold herself steady. Fifteen dollars was the most she had had for her own at any one time in her life. She had held on to it hoardingly, letting a dozen things go by that she really wanted, to lose her head in the end and spend it for a thing she didn't want at all as it proved. She was going to keep her head and her dignity this time over this sudden wealth opening to her.

"I shall pay Aunt Viney from now on; that's to be my part," she said with finality. "Remember that, please, Mamma, in making your calculations."

"But nothing more," from Auntie.

"Not one thing more, other than for yourself," from Mamma, "and I shall mention the matter to your father, now," happily, "there's nothing in it for him to feel worried over now."

Her father spoke to Selina that evening, stopping her on her way up the stairs as he came down.

"Your mother has told me about this teaching, since I got home," he said. "Stop a moment, Selina."

He lifted her face by a hand placed softly beneath her chin as they stood there on the steps. The refined, rather delicate face with the close brown beard she perforce thus looked up into, was sensitive as her own.

The eyes seemed to be regarding her as from a new viewpoint. His own little daughter, this young person with the all too heavy flaxen plaits and the dress-skirt down to her instep!

"Your mother assures me you chose to do this teaching yourself, Selina? Am I to decry it, or applaud it?"

She was horribly embarrassed, not being accustomed to discuss her affairs in this way with him, communications of an intimate nature between them always being through her mother. The thing was to end the interview as quickly as possible and get away from the disturbing proximity.

"It's settled, Papa, so don't decry it," she spoke stiffly and even while doing so was ashamed of it.

He was regarding her a little wistfully. "Your mother tells me, Selina, that you will need a winter dress?" Was he groping, perhaps sorrowfully, trying to find some point through which to reach her? "See to it that it comes from me, will you, and that it is a nice one?"

Again she was ashamed, this time of the relief with which she fled from his kiss and the touch of his hand on her shoulder.

Apparently there is everything in an undertaking being a success, even when it is teaching for your living, and you a woman. Selina told Juliette, what her four pupils were to bring her, and she told the others, they who had been so plainly shocked and full of distress for her, and they came hurrying over, filled with excitement and admiration now.

It was the afternoon following Selina's second day of teaching. She was in her own room which overlooked the backyard and Auntie's beds of salvias and dahlias still braving the first light frosts. Now Selina felt that her room didn't lack distinction. She would have preferred a set of cottage furniture like Maud's, of course, white with decalcomania decorations on it in flowers and landscapes, instead of the despised mahogany set that had belonged to the grandmother she was named for. Selina belonged to her own day and hour.

"Cottage furniture is adorable and mahogany relegated to attics and junk shops," she once had said discontentedly to her mother.

Still, with her books and her pictures, a panel in oils done by Cousin Anna, of cat-tails, and the companion to it in pond-lilies, and a Japanese parasol over her mantelpiece, her room did not lack for distinction.

She was looking over the first-reader books she had ordered for her pupils, and wondering what she was to do with them, when there was a tap at her door and Amanthus came in. Lashing the laughter of her cheeks and eyes, and Amanthus did not often stop being enchanted for side matters, this loveliest of creatures came hurrying to her and kissed her.

"I've been wanting to tell you, Selina, that Tommy and Bliss and the other boys think you're wonderful and a dear about teaching." Tommy Bacon and Bliss were the quite especial two with Amanthus just now, there never being less than two in her case. "But I came in now because Juliette has told me! Think of you earning all that!"

Juliette, who had come with Amanthus and had lingered to speak with Mrs. Wistar and Auntie in the front room, came flashing in here.

"Isn't Amanthus' new dress enchanting, Selina? Who but Mrs. Harrison would have thought of fawn color and rose? I heard ribbon bows as trimming were coming in, and I must say I like them. We've been discussing you, Selina. Maudie says you didn't want to teach, and that every step we take toward the thing we don't want to do, as you did, strengthens our characters. She is choosing something for me to take up, that I won't care for, because she says I'm volatile and changeable. Think of you really earning all that, Selina!" The crimson staining Juliette's cheeks was glorious!

"I'm not sure Maudie is such a safe one for you to follow, Judy," considered Selina, the fair-skinned. "You're not as volatile, if I know what volatile is, as she is."

Amanthus turned away from the bureau where she had been fluffing her sunny yellow hair, and came and sat down before the open coal fire with the two. "Mamma says Maudie is laughable if she wasn't so masterful, taking you all after strange gods. I asked her what strange gods meant, and she laughed and told me I'd never need to find out."

"You won't, Amanthus," said little Judy omnisciently, with a nod of her small dark head, "the rest of us, I kind of feel," with big solemnity, "will go far." Then she took a lighter tone. "It's Maudie who's always proposing something to the rest of us, but when you come to think about it, we always fall in. There she is now, calling to your mother, Selina, as she comes up the stairs. She said she'd be over."

Handsome Maud, bringing energy and unrest with her, burst forth with her plaint before even she had found a seat, Selina vacating one of the three chairs for her, and taking a place on the bed.

"It's giving me such concern, what I ought to be making of myself, Selina, now you've set the way, I didn't sleep last night for considering it. I said so to Papa, and he said 'stuff' which wasn't polite. And anyway, I know I'm right; everyone should center on some talent, only I can't decide on which. Think of the proved value of yours!"

And here Adele came in. She had gone by for one and the other, and then followed them here. If Juliette was flashing, and Amanthus enchanting, and Maudie with her red-brown hair and red and white skin, undeniably handsome, Adele, seemingly, should have been lovely. Her eyes were dark, and her cheeks softly oval. But somehow she lacked what Maud called the vital fire. Or was it confidence she lacked? She herself explained it by saying she never was allowed by her family to respect the things she had the slightest bent for doing.

As Adele came in now, her dark eyes looked their worry. She took the place indicated beside Selina on the bed. "You're working for what you'll get, Selina, giving something for something? It's just come to me, thinking it over. It must be a self-respecting feeling it gives. It makes me begin to wonder if I've really any right to my allowance from Papa."

"While Selina's busy with her teaching, maybe it would be a good thing for the rest of us to get together and keep up our German," burst forth Maud. "Oh, I know, Adele, you mean a different thing, something highly moral and uncomfortable, but meanwhile let's be doing something. It's inaction that's galling."

"You said the other day," from little Juliette, indignantly, "we'd get a chart and find out something about the stars and astronomy. I went and bought me a book!"

Amanthus, flower-like and lovely creature, looked from one to the other of them as they talked. The wonder on her face and the bother in her violet eyes made her sweet and irresistible.

"You're so queer," protestingly, "you Maudie and Adele, and yes, Juliette, too. You do get so worked up. I don't see what it is you're always thinking you're about. Selina needed the money. I don't see what more there is to it than that. It's certainly fine she is going to make all she is by teaching. And, Selina, I mustn't forget, Mamma told me to give you her love and consummations, no, I guess I mean congratulations." Amanthus was given to these lapses in her English. "Are the rest of you going to stay longer? I've got to go."

When Culpepper came around a night later and heard the astounding news of Selma's good fortune, he pretended to a loss of his usually sober head.

"Come go to the theater with me to-night, Selina, to celebrate? That is if your mother agrees? No, certainly I can't afford it. I see the question in your accusing eyes, but you needn't rub it in that I'm a plodding dependent and you're the opulent earner."

At the close of her first week at teaching William the gloomy and Rupy and Willy and Henry, Selina did not bring home her expected sixteen dollars. "It probably is customary to pay monthly. I didn't like to ask," she told Mamma and Auntie. "Settle with Aunt Viney for me until I get it, Mamma; she pays the rent for her room by the week, I know, and I'll give it to you in a lump sum at the end of the month."

And when that time came, she did, a pale, incredulous, crushed Selina, and fell weeping against Mamma's neck with a hand outstretched to be cherished by Auntie.

"She said four dollars a pupil. I supposed she meant a week the same as we pay Aunt Viney. I thought that was little enough. She is amazed I could have dreamed of such a thing. She says I ought to have known, that my common-sense should have told me, that I could have investigated for myself. She meant four dollars a month for a pupil. Education comes cheaper than cooks. The money from all four of them—- here it is." Selina stretched forth the other hand passionately. "It will not quite pay Aunt Viney."

"She was a McIntosh, as your Aunt says. I never did think it was much of an alliance for a Williams," from Mamma scathingly.

"I said from the start that boy William's head was too large" from Auntie as one justified.