Marcus was there when Selina arrived, actually and for once in the place at the time he said he would be. A bare floor, a shabby desk, three wooden-bottom chairs, and a framed cartoon of Marcus himself hanging on the wall, was the whole of it.

He arose as Selina came in and an elderly lady seated in the second of the three chairs looked at her with expectant interest.

"This is my Cousin Selina, Miss Diana Talbot."

Selina saw a plump, comely and cheerful person in comfortably sensible dress, mantle and bonnet. It may be interpolated that what Miss Diana Talbot saw was an ardent-faced, pretty girl in a plaid skirt and plain jacket, a hat with roses, and a manner bright with interest and interrogation.

The ladies shook hands.

"Miss Talbot has plans afoot to open a school in the autumn," said Marcus, "and Miss Pocahontas Boswell has done you the compliment to propose that she consider you as a teacher. Miss Talbot also on the recommendation of the elder Miss Boswell and her niece, has come from her part of the state to have me advise with her about her advertisements and her prospectus."

Miss Diana Talbot took up the narrative cheerily: "Miss Boswell and Pocahontas and I were at the same small hotel in Florida this winter. Pocahontas goes down with her aunt every year. I am returning South later in the summer to open a winter school for girls whose health requires they winter in the South, and whose parents are anxious their schooling be continued. I will say the idea was suggested to me by an acquaintance of the winter staying at the hotel with his family, a Mr. Ealing from our part of the state. His two daughters are the nucleus of my school, in fact my first enrollments. Pocahontas has suggested I let her look after my French and music this first year as she has to be South anyway. And she tells me that she has satisfied herself that you can coach beginners in Latin and algebra, hear classes in the lower branches and be of use to me in a secretarial way. I should say I have taken the hotel where we were staying, for my school. The proprietor died and it seemed opportune."

After further conversation and an appointment for a second meeting with Selina, Miss Talbot left. Resuming his seat before his desk with his long person outstretched in relaxation, Marcus smiled with lazy satisfaction over at Selina, flushed prettily with excitement.

She was glad to have this word with him: "If it turned out by chance that I could go, would it cost much to get me there, Marcus? To—to Florida?" Her voice almost broke on the magic of the word.

"Ticket, sleeper, meals, trunk, something in your pocket to start you on—a hundred or more dollars at least. I tell you though, Selina," Marcus actually roused himself and sat up emphatically, "you must make it. The longer I look at it, the more I can see it is just what you need. I haven't an idea but Pocahontas sees this in it for you, too, in proposing it. A little contact with the larger world, a little assertion and standing on your own two feet will do everything for you. Aunt Lavinia and good Miss Ann Eliza, as I've said before, keep you a baby, whereas naÏvetÉ can come to be downright irritating, and so can lack of sophistication. Break away, Selina, and find yourself now."

There was that in this unfamiliar view of herself through Marcus' estimate which hurt, and she went away silent.

Precedent and training had done all they might to make intercourse between Selina and her father strained and unnatural. She could remember when she was a bit of a thing, how on taking a pricked finger to him for attention, she had been snatched away as from an act of impiety, by womenkind, Mamma or Auntie, for womankind to attend it, and somehow the episode seemed typical.

To open confidence with your father was as desperate a violation of custom as to be immodest, and she had not forgotten the embarrassment of going to him for money for her teaching venture of the winter, even after her mother had opened the way. It came to her now that such a relation between a daughter and father was a bit shocking.

That night after her mother and her aunt were gone together to Wednesday evening service, she went to her father who was reading his paper as usual in the back parlor, and spoke quickly before her courage could fail her.

"You—you have been giving me five dollars a month for my carfare and change since I began teaching, Papa. And through Mamma you are paying for my clothes. Isn't it a losing business for you? I've only been giving Mamma the sixteen dollars I make a month, for Aunt Viney, and that's over with for the summer now."

"Instead of keeping the sixteen dollars for your carfare and incidentals and such?" smiled Papa, perhaps a little embarrassed, too, at the trend of the conversation. "Won't you sit down, Selina?"

"But it seems so much more to Mamma and Auntie to have it come from me this way."

"I bow to the processes in feminine logic more intricate than I can follow," agreed Papa. "And what then, Selina?"

For a moment she almost abandoned the affair, then rallied: "Would you be willing to advance more, Oh, a great deal more, all of—" Selina nerved herself desperately, cold to her pretty finger-tips with the effort of it, "—yes, a hundred dollars, if you thought good could come to me of it?"

"Willing always, Selina; able is another thing. It is not easy for a father to confess to his daughter that as a business proposition he is a failure."

"Papa!"

"Yes, Selina."

The very necessity to get away from the horribly painful embarrassment of this drove her on. "I have a chance to go away and teach, I can be a help then by earning something worth while. Marcus thinks it wise, Marcus says I ought to go, that I need to develop in self-reliance and——"

"Marcus be—" began Papa and stopped.

The story came forth at this with a rush of detail. "And, Papa, to be a whole, whole winter with Miss 'Hontas, under the same roof, doing the same things! I love her so, Papa, I love her!"

There were further questionings from him and answers from Selina and something in his sensitive face as he watched her while she talked, drove her to seek justification.

"There is so much in the world, isn't there, Papa? And I haven't seen anything of it yet? Not anything!"

By the time that Miss Diana Talbot was ready to return home several days later, it was settled that Selina should go South in October and teach for the winter in her school.