Selina's relatives, the Bruces, figured largely in what now followed, by not figuring therein at all. One always could count on a Bruce to do something unexpected.

It began with the absence of Marcus. Selina had not seen him since her return and had a feeling that perhaps she did not care to. She considered that she had grounds for still being indignant with him. The unworthy and the inconsiderate flourish undeservedly, however, as she reflected somewhat sorely. During the political campaign of a year ago, Marcus in a temporary associated-press capacity, had accompanied a presidential nominee and his party on their special car on an unprecedented tour through the South. This nominee was now the president of the United States, and about the time Selina was packing her trunk to come home from the South, Marcus was offered the post of consul to a group of islands in the bluest of semi-tropical seas. As Selina came up from Florida, Marcus had passed her somewhere on the way.

"He's gone to ask Pocahontas whether he wants the appointment or not," Aunt Juanita, stopping by to say howdy to Selina, explained to her and Mamma confidentially, "Of course you have grasped before this, Selina, that Pocahontas is going to marry Marcus."

Selina nodded. She had not brought herself to feel great enthusiasm on the subject even though she had been given the point of view of Miss 'Hontas to help her to it. And she did wish Aunt Juanita would take time to fix her clothes! Tall and ungroomed, the feather on her bonnet hung dejected by a thread, and three buttons were off her rusty shoe! Still as in the case of Marcus with his questionable manners, you never can tell. And Uncle Bruce, if possible, was the strangest, certainly the most unkempt of the three, and see too what had come to pass about him?

At about the same time the consulship was offered to Marcus, the home papers copied an interview from the Washington journals in which the name of Bruce figured gratifyingly. The personage of the interview was an English parliamentarian and historian, the Honorable Verily Blanke.

According to the Washington papers, this gentleman was reported as saying:

Perhaps I look forward as much as to any individual acquaintance I hope to make in your country, to my meeting with your Mr. Aurelius Bruce, whom I regard as one of the greatest living authorities on the interpretative history of the American constitution. In the course of my correspondence with this gentleman, at the time I was occupied with those chapters in my history of popular government dealing with your constitution, I promised myself if ever I should be in the United States of America, the pleasure and personal gratification of a meeting with this distinguished and profound jurist. From the nature and the variety of the authorities he has been able to point me to, affording me the desired passages from his own shelves, when these authorities were not to be met with readily by me elsewhere, I should rank his personal library devoted to American law and jurisprudence, as one of the notable ones of the country.

As Selina said when she read this in the daily paper, truly you cannot foretell!

Aunt Juanita on the same occasion of her visit to see Selina, had something to say about this tribute to Uncle Bruce, too.

"Marcus made his father write at once, or in the end, I believe, compromised with his father by writing for him, asking this Mr. Verily Blanke and his secretary, who the papers say is a grandson of some big personage or other in England, here to be our guests. There has been no answer to Marcus' letter, so I don't suppose there's a chance now they will come."

As if the Bruces were not figuring enough in the public eye, the very day after this talk, a signed communication from Aunt Juanita appeared in the local papers. She was measurably concerned in the honors come to her husband and her son, but her interest was in her own affairs.

To the Editor,

Sir: "The number of members of a body or corporation competent to transact business by law or constitution," is a "quorum," Webster, vide Quorum. Under our law a majority of the members of our City Council constitutes a quorum, and a majority of the members present is necessary for the carrying of a motion. Under this procedure, six members out of a total membership of twenty were able to kill the very necessary street watering-cart ordinance at the last meeting of our City Council.

By what equity shall the will of a minority thus imposed on that of a majority, be defended? I call the attention of women, and of women's organizations, to wit, The Women's Rights Association of America, now in session in Rochester, N. Y., to the dangers attendant on embodying such fallacies in popular government in its constitution.

Juanita Livingston Bruce.

The noon of this same day Aunt Juanita came by again. There was an air of preparation about her tall person this time. Her veil trailed crookedly and her glove tips needed mending, but she carried a satchel and umbrella. "On second thoughts, Lavinia, I am going on the afternoon train to Rochester. I can't sit still with this question of what proportion of a representative body shall constitute a working majority, threatening the future of my sex. What I want to know is, will you let Aurelius come here for his meals while I am gone? He can sleep, in fact it is safer that he should sleep, at the house. Hester will go round in the mornings and see to the anthracite in the hall stove, and whatever else there is to be done." Hester was the Bruce's servant, and like Aunt Viney had her home elsewhere.

This same afternoon, Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle came rolling around to the Wistar home in her carriage and found Auntie and Selina in.

"See here, Selina," she said so straightway one inferred it was what she came for, "Tuttle has been around here three times in ten days, I'm hearing. My dear child, look at me! So this is what your fool's errand trip south with the Boswells did for you? Not a fool's errand, I see, after all. Why she's come to real beauty, Ann Eliza! With all that Wistar flaxen hair, and her fair skin, that's right, blush away child, and her fine, clear profile, she's like a cameo. No, it won't hurt her to know it, Ann Eliza. What she needs now is exactly what a little conceit will give her. Now that I've seen you, my dear, I must say I admire Tuttle's discrimination. There's more to him than I've been giving him credit for. I began to be afraid for him about the time when he saw to it that his mosquito bar was tied back with ribbons to match his bureau cover, but that's past. He's mighty grand, I don't dispute it, Selina, and a great beau. But he hasn't got a picayune but what that vault door he keeps at the bank pays him, and that's little enough, unless his father, and I, his aunt by marriage, being fools, give it to him."