Selina, reaching home a bit before dinner, read and re-read her note from Mrs. Jones. The springs in Virginia! She felt she knew all that this meant, and knew, too, what it would mean to be the young guest of Mrs. Samuel Jones at her cottage at these springs!

After dinner, for some reason she couldn't define, she took the note, not to her mother, but her father. He was alone downstairs with his paper. He looked worn and tired, even a bit broken and haggard. Standing by his chair while he read the letter, she slipped an arm about his shoulders, though again she could not have explained why. His free hand went up, sought her hand there on his shoulder and closed on it.

He sat quite still after he had finished the reading, his eyes on the sheet of paper lowered to his knee. For a full minute he did not speak. Then:

"Tuttle has made no secret of what he means, Selina. Let's be very honest about it. Are you ready then to accept this invitation at his mother's hands?"

"Papa!" piteously.

"Unless your own mind is quite made up, I don't think you can accept it. How about it? Do you know what you want?"

"Papa!" this time beseechingly.

"Think it over, little daughter, and then come back and tell me what you decide."

"I have thought it over, Papa."

"The world and the flesh and a very decent and reputable young fellow, Selina?"

"Papa, please don't!"

"Come around here to me, where I can look at you, Selina." And when she had come, and he had drawn her down on the arm of the chair, he took her face in his hand and studied it, the eyes above all. Then he stood up, drew her to him and kissed her.

"We'll decide you won't go, little daughter. Let us say it's a case where we'll give the doubt the benefit for a while yet."

"Must I tell Mamma about the note, and about my answer to it, Papa?"

"Certainly. Why do you ask?"

"She's going to be put out. It's almost a pity she has to know. And, Papa, I'm worried about the money she's spending on clothes for me this summer! She's done it because she's pleased to have me going with Tuttle."

Selina stood before the mirror in her room, dressing for a barge party up the river. It was the first one of the season and the program was always the same. The crowd met in couples at some agreed on starting-point near the street-car line. On this occasion Cousin Anna's front porch was to be that spot by permission. From here they went down in the car to the river, descended the steep levee to the boathouse, and getting started a moment or so before sunset, if they had luck, rowed up the river a dozen miles to a certain favored spot, ate supper and floating down after the moon was up, reached the boathouse in time for an hour's dancing before going home.

With care, Selina told herself as she stood there at her mirror, one can wear a best white dress on such an affair and not get it too dabby. She'd compromise by wearing a ribbon belt and not a sash. Culpepper didn't dance, didn't care for foolishness, was the way he put it, but was going. So were Preston Cannon and Mr. Welling. The rooms over the confectionery were given up, and the three were leaving for their homes in the state to-morrow. Mr. Tate had already gone, sailing from New York for Germany this very day.

Tuttle Jones was not of the party, which consisted of Selina's world, a world that Tuttle didn't trouble with.

He had been very nice over her declining his mother's invitation.

"I was afraid perhaps you wouldn't see your way to it," he said. "I'll only be there with my mother two weeks anyhow. We can put in a very decent time here together, at home."

Selina, her dressing completed, caught up her jacket from the bed and went into her mother's room. Culpepper was downstairs waiting for her. "Mamma, will I do? It's the end of the old things, you know, a real breaking up, and I want to look nice."

"I thought you were saving that dress to go with Tuttle to call on his cousins to-morrow night," from Mamma. "The older one would have done perfectly well. Yes, you took very nice."

"You look more than nice," from Auntie emphatically. "You're looking your best, Selina. If you need the dress for to-morrow night, I'll press it for you."

Cousin Anna's porch was gay with the assembled bevy of them. Mr. Welling was with Maud, Mr. Cannon with Adele, and Bliss—yes, poor foolish Bliss, for the last time and at his own behest—was with Amanthus. Then there were Tommy and Tod Bacon and their visiting girl cousins and Brent Wild and Sam Rand for extras. Cousin Anna came out on the porch and shook hands around and laughed at their nonsense and pressed ice-water upon them. Nobody wanted any but still that was a good deal from Cousin Anna in the way of hospitality.

Amanthus spoke of her plans to Selina and Maud while they were waiting for Juliette and Algy to come. She was sweet and definite.

"Mamma and I are going on to Narragansett and then Bar Harbor, the day after to-morrow. I had a note from your Mr. Cyril Doe, Selina, the other day, I haven't seen you to tell you, written from Ottawa, and he will be in Bar Harbor like he said. Later in the summer Mamma and I go to England and Mr. Tate will meet us there, and we'll be married in London."

"What'll you call him?" from Maud, which was altogether nasty of her. "You can't bring yourself to say Lemuel, can you?"

"Lemuel is a very good name," from Amanthus with dignity, "and besides his middle name is Worthington and we'll probably call him that."

Algy and Juliette came hurrying up just as the rest of them, tired of waiting, were boarding the street car.

Juliette across the car aisle, now they could see her, looked pale. She had on her last winter's scarlet coat over a last summer's old white dress and looked dabby, poor, little, dark-eyed gypsy. But when a girl won't take the money her father offers her to buy any new summer clothes——

She had studied too hard, they all knew that. And for nothing. The examinations were but two days off now, in Cincinnati. There had been a final scene and row at her house recently, when she demanded again of her father that she be allowed to go, and again was refused with an almost brutal outburst of temper.

"And he said I'm under age," Juliette told Selina and Maud the day after this, "and if I ran off and started as I intimated I'd do, he could bring me back."

Juliette with Algy at her side was with the crowd as they left the car, and with baskets, wraps, and what not, went down the steep, rock-paved levee, to the river at its foot, rolling broad and serene, the evening ferryboats just starting on their pilgrimages, and a steamboat here and there laid up at its wharf, the red of the sun at the horizon line, turning their white paint to rosiness.

And Juliette and Algy went aboard the boathouse with them, everybody again was sure of that. Though the men couldn't recall that Algy was at his locker when they were at their own, getting into boating togs, and the girls spending their time out on the guards looking at the sunset on the water could not remember Juliette being with them.

One thing was sure. After the two barges were well started under the long strokes of the rowers, and as far on their way as the upper bridge, it was discovered that neither boat contained Juliette or Algy.

A halt following this discovery and a bringing of the barges alongside each other brought a bit of testimony from Tod Bacon.

"I saw them in one of the sculls before we got the barges out of the boathouse. I reckon they've plans of their own."

There was a good deal of grumbling over the absence of Algy when they landed for supper on the high, woody bank that overswept the river up and down in a mighty stretch of view. Algy always built the fire, and went to the nearest farmhouse for water, and fetched and carried generally.

The girls were unpacking the baskets and Maud had produced a tablecloth.

"Here, give me the bucket and I'll get the water," grumbled Culpepper, "but the rest of you fellows busy yourselves with the fire."

It was wonderful always, floating back those twelve miles downstream by moonlight. And such moonlight as there was to-night! One wondered what Amanthus found to say to Bliss. Culpepper with his orange and black blazer over his boating togs was lolling back in the stern of their barge beside Selina, and she said as much to him.

He answered good-humoredly, "It isn't Amanthus' business in life to say, as she's often told you. She won't try to say."

Tod Bacon, that nice boy, and Sam Rand, had their mandolins. Their clever picking of the strings ting-ling-a-linged over the broad waters.

"Honey, I'm going home to-morrow," said Culpepper, laying hold of a bit of Selina's jacket as it lay unused on her lap and openly fondling it while his eyes sought her face in the moonlight. "You haven't let me talk to you yet? What are you going to do about it?"

And here Culpepper's hand, his big, firm hand leaving the cloak he had used for a blind, found her hand.

Culpepper took what he wanted of life and people! She had said so before! And resented it!

She regained her hand. He didn't seem to hold it against her and went back to his fondling of the jacket. "What you going to do about it, honey?"

"Tell you good-bye and a nice summer," said Selina briskly, moving her jacket. "I don't want to hear you talk, as you call it, Culpepper."

"Well, I'll be back," from this young gentleman, still without resentment. "My mother has entered me in the best law firm in your town; isn't she the first-class fellow? And I come down to start in August."

Patently Juliette and Algy did have their own plans and as patently didn't care to discuss them. They were at the boat-club waiting when the others arrived, and it was plain they neither of them cared to talk. Juliette's white dress under the scarlet coat looked dabbier, and she was altogether pale.

She danced a little with the rest of them at the start, Tod Bacon, blessed boy, at the piano, but after that sat by herself, tired, she said. But when Algy, after prowling in the lunch baskets, brought her a sandwich and a bottle with shrub in it, she obediently ate the one, and when he had found a glass and got ice from the janitor, drank the other.

Algy, big, splendid dear, looked pale himself, and with his straight features so unwontedly grown-up and stern, even looked gaunt.

Mr. Welling, romping rather than waltzing by with one of the Bacon cousins, called to Algy.

"'Oh, swiftly glides the bonnie scull!' Or did it, Algy?"

"Aw, I don't know what you mean," said Algy crossly. "Lemme alone, can't you, Welling?"

The next morning they learned what the temporary disappearance of Juliette and Algy the night before meant. The Wistars were at breakfast when Maud came flying over and into the dining-room. In her blue gingham dress, her red-brown hair was glorious, but her eyes were big and her cheeks white.

At sight of her, Selina in a fresh gingham herself, divined something amiss and rose to meet her. Maud in her blue dress, threw herself upon Selina in her pink one, and burst into tears. "Juliette went across the river last night when we missed her, and was married to Algy!"

Selina clutched at Maud and they stayed each other. The exclamations of Mamma and Auntie, and the question or two from Papa, reached them, as it were, from far away.

Then Maud recovered herself. She had a tale to unfold and must be at the business! "I was at my window dressing, up a bit earlier than usual to work on my German verses, at my bay window, Selina, that looks out on the Caldwells. And I saw Algy arrive and come round the side way, and whistle real softly under Juliette's window. And after a minute Juliette came out the side-door with her hat and jacket and her gloves on, carrying her satchel. And I called to 'em and hurried down and met 'em at the gate and they told me they were married last night. Algy had come round to take her and put her on the train for Cincinnati. He entered her by telegraph last night for the examinations as Juliette Caldwell Biggs. She isn't of age, you see, Mr. Wistar, and her father told her he'd stop her if she tried to go."

"Judy!" from Selina, weeping anew. "That little, tiny, pretty, breakable Judy!"

"I've known little tiny, pretty people myself," from Papa with humor. "It doesn't always preclude determination."

"Determination," retorted Mamma. "I don't know what you mean, Mr. Wistar. I call it self-will in Juliette that's outrageous."

"Mamma!" from Selina.

"I haven't finished," from Maudie, wiping her eyes and looking up. "After she's taken her examination, she's going to her college cousin up in Ohio, to wait and see if she passes. But she'll pass, we all know Juliette. And from there she'll enter college next fall. Juliette's written letters to send back to her grandfathers to see if either of them will help her through her college course with money. And if they won't she'll let Algy lend her enough to get her through."

"Algy!" from Mamma, scandalized, "doesn't she realize he's her husband?"

"Algy put her through college?" from Auntie bewildered. "Doesn't she understand she's married?"

Maud looked startled. She seemed to be seeing it in this light for the first time herself. "I—I don't believe she does. I don't believe it's occurred to Juliette that way at all. But," brightening, "Algy won't expect her to. He's sure to understand. He's always been that way; hasn't he, Selina?"

Selina nodded in corroboration.

"Accommodating, you know," further elucidated Maud, "and—er—perfectly willing to be—well—an expedient."

"Expedient!" from Mamma, "And you're speaking of the girl's husband?"

"Glorious," from Papa. "We've often thought it about ourselves, we husbands, but it takes the younger generation to admit it."

"I don't like this levity," from Auntie, "my head's all in a whirl and I don't understand," piteously. "Marriage is a solemn thing and carries heavy obligations. Hasn't she thought at all of what a very great deal she's taking for granted in this young man? In Algy?"

Darling Auntie!

"Selina," from her father, "take your auntie's cup out to Viney and get her some fresh coffee. I do believe she's honestly pale. Woman's being driven willy-nilly, to and fro, up and down, finding herself these days, don't you realize that, big Sis? What's a mere Algy or two in the final issue?"

"Marriage is a solemn thing and carries obligations," insisted Auntie still piteously. Then she rose for her to vast heights. "For a woman to marry for any end but the one, is like using the chalice of the holy sacrament as a basket to carry her own wares to market."