One afternoon toward the end of April, Mamma came to Selina's door. Her manner was both pleased and excited.

"Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle is here in her carriage. Tuttle's sister, Mrs. Sampson, is with her. They've stopped by to take you driving."

Selina flushed. "I don't know that I want to go, Mamma."

Mrs. Wistar looked tried. "When I've already been down to speak to them and tell them you would? Get up quickly, Selina, and slip off that dress and let me take your hair down, and put it up again. Nobody can make it look so well and stay in place as I can. There's plenty of time if you'll come on. Mrs. Tuttle said they would go up to the Harrison's and leave cards and be back for you."

Mamma worked swiftly, a hairpin or two for immediate use held between her lips and preventing conversation, while the clear-cut face of Selina before the mirror of the mahogany bureau looked absently at the face of Selina within the mirror.

There was something about Tuttle's solicitude and zeal for her which she did not understand. This arrival now of Mrs. Tuttle and Mrs. Sampson was but more of the same vaguely disturbing sort of thing.

"Mamma, it's too much, it's forever Tuttle's family. Do you realize I'm about being run by his family?"

Mamma got rid of the hairpins. "And why shouldn't you be? They see that he admires you, and I must say it's very generous and sweet of them——"

"Generous, Mamma?"

"Well, the word was ill-advised. I'll get out your coat and hat now your hair's done, while you slip on your dress."

"That's all, Mamma, please. I'll finish dressing quicker by myself if you'll let me."

Selina wanted to think, and she sighed with relief as the door closed behind her mother. Was she, in truth, being absorbed, by Tuttle and his people? She ran over the past weeks in her mind. Culpepper Buxton had apologized and she accepted the truce, but did she have time ever to see him? When did she see Maud and Juliette and Adele nowadays?

And just how came it about? Quite casually late one afternoon in March, Tuttle and his mother had dropped in. Selina had not met this lady before. Report had it that if Tuttle's father took him calmly, he on the contrary led his mother by her fine, straight Tuttle nose. In the course of the brief call it developed that Mrs. Jones had charge of a booth at the forthcoming Easter kirmess, and wanted to know if Selina would make one of the half dozen young people to assist her? Also in leaving, she held Selina's hand a moment overlong in her beautifully gloved one. She was tall, fair and good looking-herself. "You're very winning and lovely, my dear," she said, "and I quite can see why my Tuttle thinks so."

Following this a bevy of Tuttle's girl cousins came to call, and next Selina was asked to a box party given by Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle during the week of the spring opera. It meant a new dress and all but precipitated a breach between Mamma and Auntie.

Auntie hotly resented the invitation for some reason known to herself, whereas Mamma was determined that Selina should accept it.

"Certainly it means a new dress," she agreed promptly, when Auntie intimated that it did, "and I'm going straight down street now and get it. Write your note of acceptance to Mrs. Tuttle, Selina, and I'll mail it on my way."

She came back with an organdie! And French organdies such as this one she triumphantly unfolded, came by way of New Orleans and cost accordingly.

"While the ground of it's white," said Mamma, "and there's the faintest blush in the blossoms, the general effect is of the pale apple-green of the leaves. With Selina's pale hair, she ought to look more than well in the green."

Auntie set her lips.

"I didn't get a pattern-book this time; it seemed more a case for a real fashion-paper. I got sash ribbon and I got lace, and if you think best, we'll have a seamstress in for a day?"

"As you please," said Auntie grimly, "I prefer to have no say in the matter."

Whereupon Selina had run and thrown her arms around Auntie and cried, but then as Mamma said fretfully, Selina cried and Ann Eliza snapped at everything of late and there wasn't much reward trying to do things for either of them.

The dress was a triumph and even Mrs. Tuttle resplendent in her box at the opera said so, while Tuttle whispered—well, no matter what Tuttle whispered—the point being that not even the success of the dress quite removed the sting of hurt feelings behind it.

And here three days later were Mrs. Tuttle and Mrs. Sallie Jones Sampson arrived to take her driving! True, report had it again that Tuttle led his aunt in her turn, by her grumbling weakness for himself——

Mamma put her head in at the door. "Ready, Selina? They're here!"

The open carriage at the gate, Selina went out to it. Its upholsterings and its coachman were in plum color. Mrs. Tuttle was in strawberry, the newest shade of the day, with a parasol to match, and Mrs. Sampson a stout, lively and good-humored matron, was in raspberry, the next newest shade. The effect of the whole, equipage and ladies, was, well—resplendent. Selina, with a new rose on her last spring's hat, and new buttons and a new satin collar on her last year's coat, got in amid the elegance of it. As to where they were going there was no issue. The carriage world drove out the avenue every bright afternoon and met all the rest of the carriage world. The plum-colored carriage and pair whirled about and started for the avenue.

Mrs. Tuttle was talking. "Sally here was just saying, Selina, she didn't know how lovely your shade of hair was, till she saw you in that pale green the other night. And you'll go on gaining in your looks, I tell her. The Wistar women are all handsome to the end. Look at Ann Eliza at forty-eight!"

They had been discussing her, Selina! They were taking account of her stock in value it would seem!

The carriage turning into the avenue took its place, one of the procession moving in one direction meeting a procession returning in the other. Mrs. Tuttle bowed from time to time, and Mrs. Sampson bowed and at times waved a hand in friendlier gesture.

"There wasn't a lovelier and more personable matron in town in my young days, either, Selina, than your grandmother," said Mrs. Tuttle, "the mother of Ann Eliza and Robert, your father I mean. I've just been telling Sally here. Your grandfather was prospering, his foundry was the largest in this part of the state, and Mrs. Wistar as the head of the establishment was both efficient and popular."

They had been discussing her further. Her grandmother Wistar, her grandfather, the prospering foundry, the establishment, were to be considered assets!

And here in Mrs. Tuttle's pompous, plum-colored barouche, Selina told herself hotly that she understood now what it all meant. It meant that Tuttle in his own mind had accepted her, but not her world and her friends! She saw it suddenly. Instead, she, Selina, was being led to his world, and introduced to his friends! It was she that Tuttle wanted, because she pleased him, but not her setting. It was she he would translate as it were, to his world and his affiliations and familiars. And with such tacit understanding apparently, his coerced family were discussing her as they accepted her?

Her face burned, her heart raced, her slim fingers gripped at the plum-colored cushions. Would the mincing, parking drive never be done, and they and their carriage and pair out of this senseless procession, and she, Selina, at home?

At home and these polite conversational returns to Mrs. Tuttle and Mrs. Sampson over with, and in her own room and the key turned and alone! She wanted to look at the facts. She wanted to put facts together and apply herself to what they said and try and get at the truth.

Put facts together and so get at the truth. That is the way to reach truth. Then why hadn't she found it those many, many times before when she wanted it so? Was it that she failed to know or to admit facts? Had been discouraged, even taught to shut her mind and her eyes to facts?

"Tuttle's taken his father's house, room by room now," Mrs. Tuttle was saying to Mrs. Sampson, "and made it over into an absolutely reproachless interior. And you'll have to allow, Sally, that your father's only idea when he built it was to spend money. It's a passion with the boy, a sort of mania to bring things up to convention and correctness. The more amenable his wife, the greater happiness Tuttle will get making her into the perfect thing he'd have her."

At home at length, and safe within her room, Selina cried bitterly, her hat and jacket thrown on the bed, and she dropped into a chair with her pretty head upon the table that also was desk and book-shelf.

So much for Tuttle? She could see it no other way now she came to look at it! And what then? Was it so bad a thing she was finding him guilty of? The repudiation of that world and its people and its things, that she belonged to? The keeping himself, with the exception of the Harrisons, skilfully unidentified with her group or their affairs?

And say this was the truth? Was it humiliation at base which Tuttle was offering her in place, part and identity in life through his own? Or was it laudation? In that he could conceive nothing better to offer than his best own?

And by way of contrast with Tuttle, what of Culpepper's attitude to her? Certainly he had not sinned along these lines? Culpepper made friends of her friends, made one with her family, easily and serenely, tolerantly and indulgently in fact, just as he took the confidences she gave him about her efforts at self-support, and her failures, just as he played escort and took her to doors and came after her, every way, indeed, but seriously.

"Play away," his amused manner seemed to say, "amuse yourself with these things, even improve your character through the effort put into them. When the time comes, the proper time, it's the man who'll sweep these out of the way, and have done with their assumptions, and take care of you."

Was this the truth, too? If she was to read Tuttle the one way, was this the way she was to read and understand Culpepper?

Quickly and passionately she got up and went and laved her face at the washstand, and as quickly and passionately went to the window of her room, through which the while she had heard voices. Auntie down there in the yard was moving about in company with old colored Uncle Taliaferro Bucklin. It was April, buds and blooms were on lilac bush and peach tree, and Auntie and Uncle Taliaferro were looking over the ground-plan of flower beds and borders preparatory to their yearly activities.

"Those seedling hollyhocks we put out last spring, Taliaferro, make a good show. They'll bloom this year," from Auntie. "So'll these Canterbury bells I brought down from the Buxton's garden, bloom for the first time. I want to put in quite a good deal this spring with a thought to next fall, dahlias and astors and cosmos and salvia in plenty. I don't know anything that comes at a time you're more grateful to 'em, than the late-blooming things in the fall."

"Look at these he'ah lockspuhs, Miss Ann 'Liza," from Uncle Taliaferro direfully. "Same thing as las' yeah. Worm right at the root of ev'ey pesky las' one. Never did have no faith in that wood-ashes you's so sure about, myse'f."

Flowers take patience and faith, and tendance and waiting. Would she, Selina, looking down on the little backyard and these two patient workers in it, ever come to a place like Auntie, where she could care for them enough to center time and hope and affection in them?

Never! Never! She threw her arms out in refutation of any such surrender in herself!

Which brought to her mind that she promised Mamma and Auntie answers to certain pleas from both of them before another week-end. And at this her hands clenched in further refutation, this time of their claims. For wherever and however she arrived now, it was going to be through truth and for herself! Undoubtedly she would have to hurt Mamma and hurt Auntie, which last was even harder, but at least she would be honest in doing it.

Passionately she put on her hat and jacket again and left her room and hurried down the stairs and out of the house. The show and feel of late April were everywhere, in the green of the lawns, in the buds of the shrubberies, in the unfolding blooms of the magnolia trees, in the soft languor of the dusk already falling.

Three blocks away Selina turned in at the brick rectory next the church she had gone to all her life.

The side-door with a step beneath a little penthouse roof led direct into the rectory study. She tapped at this door and entering, hurried across the room to the elderly little clerical figure in the chair beside the cluttered table. Dropping on the footstool beside this chair, she put her hands, both, into the parchment brown ones outstretched to greet her.

The study, with its book-lined walls, its cluttered table, its cluttered open desk, its smoldering grate fire, reeked with tobacco. The scholarly little person in clerical garb in the leather chair seemed mellowed to meerschaum tints with it, from the ivory tones of his close, small beard, to the parchment brown of those shapely old hands grasping hers, while their owner looked in kindly fashion down into her face lifted to his.

The volume he had laid down at her entrance, was of a Hebrew character. Report had it that he was equally at home in at least three other tongues as erudite. He had baptized Selina, a wee baby in flowing robes, and fourteen years later had prepared her for her confirmation. From the pulpit he had talked to her nearly every Sunday of her life since babyhood. His wife was fond of her; he was fond of her. In their ways he and this pretty girl were very good friends. And yet in reality he knew nothing whatever about her.

"Selina, my child? And what then, my dear?"

"A great deal, Dr. Ronald. Mamma feels that I ought to be in all sorts of things connected with the church now, the Rector's Aid, and the Altar Guild, and such things. And that I ought to take a Sunday-school class. She's said so much about it, she's stopped now, and only looks her hurt and disappointment, that I don't do it." She paused. The fine old brown hand went on patting hers. Its owner's eyes went on studying her face not unshrewdly.

"And Auntie comes to industrial school every Saturday morning, and every Saturday morning looks disappointed when I decline her invitation to come with her."

"And why decline it, my dear? That at least is a little thing to do, to please her?"

Selina burst forth. "I'm through with doing things because it pleases somebody. I've done it all—church, confirmation, communion—because they told me to. I've never had a conviction in my life. Tell them for me, please, Dr. Ronald—that's what I've come to you for—tell them that I've a right to find the ways for myself. Tell them, that because I haven't found any of them for myself, it's all perfunctory, and all cut and dried. That I hate the coming, that I hate it when I'm here, hunting God in my Sunday clothes in congregations, and I hate God, too, if he's what they all seem to make him."

She sobbed, and her head slipped onto his knee, face down as she sobbed. The wrinkled brown hand merely moved itself to the masses of her hair and went on patting.

"My dear, my dear," the old rector said, "I'm surprised, I'm truly distressed. You are young, overyoung and impatient and heady. And you imagine these things you feel to-day are final. As for your mother, Selina, and your good aunt, salt of the earth they are, never overlook that fact, salt of the earth. While on the other hand, these things you are confessing to are traits common to all youth rather than peculiar to you. How many dare I estimate in my forty years' pastorate in this church, have come to me in this room as you to-day, each with youth's cry against the claim of things upon him?"

The touch of his hand upon her head was gentle.

"Patience, Selina, patience. Do not think we've not been, all of us, where you are to-day. And don't forget that it is as inevitable you also will be where we are!"

She lifted her head, staring at him in a kind of horror. She even remembered to be sorry for that long procession of youth coming to him through forty years, her heart seeming to be monotoning in a sort of bitter chanting for them, "Bread and he gave them a stone. Bread and he gave them a stone."

"Never," she declared to him passionately, getting up and feeling about for her hat that had tumbled somewhere. "Never! Please, Dr. Ronald, I'd rather go now. And as to my coming to the place that you say I some day will, never, never!"

He looked at her as she pinned on her hat, but made no motion to stay her. And the while though he said not one word, it was to her as though he shouted it forth, "So they all said, that procession of youth passing through this room through forty years."

It infuriated her so to know he was thinking it, she hurried away with barely a civil word at leaving. Like the rest of them in this also, he could have told her.

Her way back took her past the home of Algy Biggs. He was getting home from work just as she got there. The Biggs house, broad and comely, stood in half a square of irreproachable lawn, rolled and clipped, trimmed and impeccable. At the curb the carriage was just arrived with Algy's mother and his sisters in it.

When Algy had been told to go to college or get out and find a job for himself and depend on it, he found one at the locomotive shops, working on the inside of boilers. That was two years ago; he was still in the shops, getting thirty-five dollars a week now, for he said so.

And at this particular moment when Selina met him he probably was just out of his overalls, for the grime and smudge of the shops were still upon him. Tall and blond chap that he was, his blue eyes gleamed unspeakably funny out of his blackened face.

Selina bowed to his mother and sisters. But she—yes—she did—kissed her finger tips to Algy. She understood this! She gloried in his act! She exulted in Algy!