The morning after Selina's return from Eadston she spoke to her mother about her Aunt Juanita's proposal that she do some clerical work. "It'll be for only a few weeks, but if she thinks I can do it, Mamma, I'd like to try."

"Juanita has a wonderful head for just that sort of thing," said Mrs. Wistar, impeccable little lady, sitting by her window stitching on a petticoat for Selina, "hunting up lists and sorting people and poking figures and facts at them when she's sorted them. I suppose she knows what it's about. I must say I never have grasped it myself. And I do wish she'd mend her clothes. The only concession she's ever made to being a woman is curl-papers. I asked her once how it happened and she said no doubt Hecuba, wife of Priam, had some weakness. I asked her who Hecuba, wife of Priam, was, and she said she'd expected I'd ask just that. Still I'd like you to know your aunt better by being thrown with her. Juanita's a most excellent and high-minded person."

"She doesn't think as much of the rest of her sex," said Selina to this stoutly. Wasn't Mamma defending Aunt Juanita who had criticized her? "She says you don't know the first thing about your affairs. What does she mean? What affairs?"

"I should consider it an insult to your father if I thought I had to know. I had five thousand dollars when I married, the same as she had. It's this she means. She's always asking me where it is. I've never sought to know." Mamma spoke virtuously, even proudly.

In the surprise of this knowledge of her mother's affluence, Selina lost her head. "Five thousand dollars, Mamma! What became of it?"

"The tone of your question sounds like your aunt Juanita," severely, "I've never asked."

Selina found herself suddenly turned stubborn. "Why didn't Papa tell you? Why should you have to ask?"

Auntie came into the conversation. They had forgotten her sitting over at the second window also stitching on a petticoat, also for Selina. It was the one Selina had started for herself. It was the first of May, and did they not, these two dear ladies, always endeavor to make Selina two around of everything in underclothes and thus replenish her stock, every April and May? Darling Auntie, who had acknowledged the meager satisfaction of a life given up to stitching underclothes and polishing brasses!

She was speaking. "Robert has always insisted on explaining and going over business matters with me. I inherited the same as he did under our father's will, you see, Selina. From the start he has regularly brought me slips of paper written over with figures and those worrying ditto marks. I listen while he goes over them, but when he goes I drop 'em in the fire. I know it's right if Robert says so."

Selina turned stubborn again. She felt unaccountably irritated. "Well, I don't just see the merit in that, myself, Auntie. Somehow it doesn't seem quite fair to Papa."

"Selina!" from her mother scandalized. "Do you realize what you are saying? And who you're talking to?"

Aunt Juanita being seen about the matter again, thought that Selina might do, and further agreed that she ask Maud and Juliette if they wanted to come and help her.

From this interview with Aunt Juanita, Selina went straight across the street to the Addisons' to see Maud and find out.

She found her in her own room with an array of books, including a dictionary, much paper, and a purple smudge from her ink bottle, on her nose. Energetic, restless, and dissatisfied Maud!

"I've turned on china painting; it was pretence with me from the start, Selina. Do you realize you haven't been over here for—well—almost weeks? I'm working at my German again. If Marcus and Miss Pocahontas did German verse into English, and even got some of the cleverest of it printed in the back of a magazine, why shouldn't I try what I can do? I'm working at some of the easier verses of Heine. Sit down and tell me about your trip to Eadston."

Selina told her about the wedding and then explained her mission. "I don't grasp in the least what Aunt Juanita's about, Maud. She never explains. But she and Mrs. Higginson want to pay us to help 'em advance what she calls the cause of woman."

"It's a phrase going the rounds," from Maudie. "I've run on it a good many times lately. Selina, I'm not a snob, and neither are you, but I must say I'd like to know and to work with Mrs. Higginson. And it's not because she's our richest woman, in the finest home, and it's not because she and Mr. Higginson give about everything that's given in the way of gifts to the city. I think probably it's because that sort of person must be fine to know, and interesting."

"You'll come then?"

"I will if Mamma says I may. Let's go right now and ask her."

Mrs. Addison was downstairs lending a directing oversight in her dining-room and ample pantries. The elderly downstairs man of many years' service in the household had died this past winter, and she, capable and impatient person, was going through the trials of a succession of young and inefficient substitutes. Or so she defined them. "They don't know one thing about their duties, Selina, and they won't let anybody tell them. Listen to me and hold on to Viney till she's actually tottering."

The same old story it was, differing only in that Mrs. Addison was more fortunate than most in having her troubles deferred this long.

Having finished her own recital, she heard what Maud had to say, somewhat testily.

"I'll consider the money as part of my mission offering, Mamma, if you don't like the idea of my taking it," this person pleaded. "It will give me something to do and be such sport being with Selina, and with Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson."

"Do it then," from Mrs. Addison impatiently. "To have you moping around the house the way you've been, tearful and complaining, is as much of a trial as these worthless houseboys. I've got my hands full enough with them. Thank heavens your sisters are still at school and occupied! Go on if it will satisfy you and content you."

The two flew right over to see and ask Juliette. They found her also in her own room. She slipped some textbooks in her desk before she turned round to greet and to listen to them. She proved bitterly heroic. "I'd be most glad to make the money. I happen to need every cent I can get, and under the circumstances, considering what I want it for, I can't take it from Papa. But I haven't time. I'm busy every moment I can get to myself."

She didn't say what she was busy with, but the others divined. It was the first of May. She was studying for those problematical college examinations in June.

It was well past noon when Selina and Maud left her and started downstairs to go home. The Caldwells had dinner at one, and at the front door the two met Mr. Caldwell coming in.

Maud, with her chestnut hair and red and white skin and lively carriage, was handsome, and Selina, slim and fair, was pleasing. Mr. Caldwell liked pretty women. He was brisk and off-hand.

"Glad you've been over to see Juliette, both of you. Coax her out with you, get her into the things you're doing, like she used to be, girls. Get this college bee out of her bonnet and you'll do us a favor over here. Advanced learning! College for women! Dr. Mary Walker trousers next! She must have been crazy when she took this idea up. See here, both of you, take these three two-dollar bills. Get Juliette and all of you go to the matinÉe this afternoon—my treat. Blow in the change on carfare and candy. It'll mean a lot to get her out with you again."

In their embarrassment, their faces crimson, the bills were actually thrust in Maud's hand and left there, and Mr. Caldwell gone into the house and clattering up the stairs, before they could collect themselves sufficiently to refuse it. It meant going back into the house now and finding Mrs. Caldwell.

She was in the kitchen, a would-be pleasant room, with wide windows and a door opening on a porch. But right now it was unswept, the ashes hadn't been taken out the stove which they overflowed, the sink was full of unwashed, unscraped dishes.

Pretty Mrs. Caldwell, flushed and disheveled, taking up dinner from the hot stove, set down a dish to pin up her trailing negligÉe, and to take the money Maud handed her.

"Juliette wouldn't have gone on it anyway, even if we'd felt we wanted to take it," Maud was explaining.

"Juliette's behaving abominably," from Mrs. Caldwell. "Yes, of course, girls, the last cook's gone, too. Impertinent! Demanding to know her duties to the dot, and wanting me to specify her exact time off. Saucy! At least, Maud, it's some comfort to know that your mother with her reputation has come into her trouble, too. And, Selina, I hear that someone offered more wages to your Cousin Anna Tomlinson's cook, and she's left. After being with her ten years! Ingratitude! I don't see what we're coming to."

That afternoon, Selina and Maud, while they were about it, went over to see Adele. She had on an elaborate tea-gown in peach-blow silk and lace that sat on her dejectedly.

When she heard about the offer from Mrs. Bruce, she sighed, and her soft cheeks flushed and longing came into her dark eyes. The awkwardness left her and she forgot the fripperies of the tea-gown that so embarrassed her.

"If only I might make the third! I'm so desperate for something to do, I envy the servants."

"I envy the men digging gas-pipe trenches along the street," burst forth vigorous Maud. "Do you know they're really considering letting girls come to the athletic club certain afternoons this summer and learn to play tennis? Mamma thinks it's too violent and unladylike, but I'm going to do it anyhow if they decide to let us."

"I'm desperate sometimes," from Adele, sighing. "I'll tell you what I did the other day. I was waiting for Mamma to be ready for a reception. Oh, but I'm a dreary weight on her hands when she gets me to them. I was in the library and I took a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote down all the words that seem most full of thrill and lure to me when I say 'em over. Then I wrote at the top of the paper, 'Thesaurus for the Ennuied.' Papa came in just then, home a bit early for him, and for some reason came over to me where I was sitting at the library table and took the slip from me. He read it through and took me by the chin and looked down at me as if he were studying me. Then he said right oddly, "That bad, Adele?"

"What were the words you'd written down?" from Maud.

"Just what I was going to ask you?" from Selina.

"I don't remember exactly, there were so many of them. Any of them will do. Words that I somehow seem to revel in—hew, build, make, do, fashion, kindle, evolve! I don't know," wistfully and a little embarrassed, too "that I can make you understand?" Then with a change of manner, "Have you seen Amanthus lately, either of you?"

"No," from Selina.

"No," from Maud.

From Adele suddenly, "Mr. Tate's grandmother's dead. The wife of the grandfather who left him the money."

"Who told you?"

"Amanthus. He'll come into a great deal of money now, he told Mrs. Harrison so, Amanthus says."