On Selina's return in the late afternoon, she came up to her mother's room, her step light and springy now, to tell the two about her visit. She had made up her mind that if she had to do this thing, she would do it with as good grace as possible. They on the contrary had had time to grasp the idea of Selina as a teacher in its several significances.

"Don't think I'd let you do a thing I did not think was proper and right, Selina," her mother hurried to say in greeting. "There's nothing derogatory, I'm sure, in accepting remuneration. I made a set of chemises for your Cousin Anna last year, you remember, and was glad to have her pay me."

"Look at me," said Auntie, "and don't you make chemises or anything else, unless it's an understood thing that somebody is going to pay you."

A wave of protective feeling rushed over Selina, new to her but warming and whelming, and she had forgiven them.

"I think, Mamma, that Mrs. Williams meant me when she spoke yesterday. She said she was glad to see I was sensible about it. Evidently there are people thinking I ought to go to work. She did."

This was not so rosy as Selina meant it to be for the attentive two; she must do better.

"I'm sure, too, Mamma, she meant to be complimentary. She said a whole lot about my being a booky girl, that she'd heard I was fond of reading, and some more of that sort of thing. And about how she laid a great deal of stress herself on cultivation, and how she wanted William Jr. to achieve a taste that way, too. And she said that habits and associations in the person of a teacher—I remember her words—mean so much."

"I hope she values 'em accordingly," said Auntie indignantly. "I don't like any such tone from her to you. She was a McIntosh, we mustn't forget that. I never thought much of the stock."

"I'm sure all that Selina has told us is most gratifying," Mrs. Wistar hastened to claim. "It only emphasizes the fact that teaching is a calling of accomplishments and refinements. I remember the teacher that I myself recall best." When Mrs. Wistar lost herself in reminiscence, she was more than apt to lose her point also. "His name was Aristides Welkin, and we called him Mr. Arry. He took snuff and recited Dryden and Milton to the class in parsing most beautifully. He was English and sometimes I think now, looking back upon it, drank. My parents paid well for the privilege of having my sister Juanita and myself under him. It was a school of selection and fashion, in the basement under the First Church."

Selina kept to her narrative. "She said that of course I was a beginner. That she realized it would hardly pay me to come way out to her house for just William, and she thinks she can get three other pupils in the neighborhood who will come into the class. I'm to go on with him while she tries."

"If you're valuable as all that sounds," insisted Auntie, holding to her point tenaciously, "she certainly ought to pay you well."

Selina paused to steady her voice. So far in her world, and in the world of Mamma and Auntie, money matters were mentioned only when they had to be, and then with embarrassment and reluctance. Hot to her finger-tips and wincing to the fiber, she had had to discuss dollars and cents with Mrs. Williams. Or rather, this lady with her air of large condescension and kindly patronage had discussed it for her. Since Mamma and Auntie had brought her up to feel this shrinking from these things, how could they be so eager now about this part of the interview?

"Mrs. Williams said she had inquired at the private schools and the kindergartens, found the charge for a pupil, and would of course fix the price at that." The blood surged slowly over Selina's face.

"Yes?" from Mamma a little impatiently.

Auntie however had noted the surging signals of distress. "I said that boy William's head was too large," she declared anticipatorily to anything of any nature which might follow.

Selina, who abhorred doing an uncouth thing, gulped. It was the painful coincidence of the thing. The identical sum fixed by Mrs. Williams and custom for training youth to a knowledge of the rudiments, culture, good habits and worthy associations, had been in the mouths of Mamma, Auntie and herself, all too recently. On hearing it from Mrs. Williams, Selina had winced, and now shrunk from mentioning it herself until she had to.

"I start in to-morrow. Mrs. Williams said why procrastinate things. No, I won't take off my hat, thank you, Auntie."

She was winking fast, her eyes swimming behind something suspiciously like tears. She was swallowing, too, at thought of her own especial little world, her world including Amanthus and Maudie, Juliette and Adele, and their prosperous and easy surroundings. And having reached this point, she sobbed. For what would be the effect of the announcement of her teaching on her world? And what, too, would Culpepper Buxton say? The stepson of Cousin Maria Buxton, down here from up in his part of the state studying law, and her, yes, her very good friend? What would be the attitude of Culpepper to her move?

She found voice. Moreover, she smiled bravely at Auntie. "No, don't take my cloak, please. I'm going out to find the girls and tell them and have it over with. The price, you say, Mamma?" Unexpectedly she sobbed again. The coincidence was mortifying. "Four dollars."

"I quite begin to follow your meaning, Ann Eliza, when you say Mrs. Williams was a McIntosh," said Mamma with dignity. "You are right; her old grandfather, Manuel McIntosh, used to sit outside his doorstep on the sidewalk in his shirt-sleeves."

"I've always had a big respect for cooking, myself," said Auntie with unexpected relevancy. "I've never thought we put enough emphasis on it as a calling. Feeding the body is a worthy thing. It comes first."

"Who said anything about cooking, Ann Eliza?" from Mamma sharply. "How you wander from the point! If you're going out before dark, Selina, you'd better go."

The two dear ladies at their respective windows, beside their respective work-baskets, watching for Selina to go out, saw her run right into her four friends at the gate. The inference was they were coming by on some of their common affairs. There was the weekly dancing club, the last volume from the circulating library always passed around, the new pattern-book, what-not, constantly bringing them together.

The group opened to Selina as she came through the gate, each individual of it talking as it did so, and closed about her in its midst. Selina was popular with her friends.

Maud Addison was the dashing one with the red-brown hair and the splendidly red and white skin. Maud's father was a solidly prosperous wholesale merchant and a Presbyterian elder, as Auntie was wont to say, as if the two things were bracketed, and Mrs. Addison, her mother, capable and authoritative, was a noted housekeeper. There were four children younger than Maud.

"I must say," commented Mrs. Wistar from her window to her sister-in-law at hers, "Maud's rushing the season for October. And Indian summer hardly begun. That's the new sealskin jacket her father and mother promised her at graduation in June. I'd like it better if it did not fit in like a basque."

"If only Selina might have suitable clothes," grieved Auntie, "she would wear clothes well with her nice carriage and her pretty skin, and her color that comes and goes. She would justify pretty things. She gets her features from you, Lavinia, and her hair and her skin from Robert."

"Thank you, Ann Eliza. I must allow I was considered pretty in my day."

The dark and vivid little creature of the group, the little flitting, flashing creature at this moment embracing Selina, was Juliette Caldwell. Juliette's mother was pretty and young to have two daughters younger than Juliette and a son in arms. Her father, young, too, was given to bantering, banging on the piano and making money.

"That crimson at the throat of Juliette's coat, and the crimson feather in her hat, become her," went on Mrs. Wistar.

Auntie agreed. "And Adele Carter is pretty after her own fashion, after all, Selina always insists she is."

"If you like that colorless skin and those big reflective dark eyes," said Mrs. Wistar.

"Adele's mother and her grandmother peck at her too much," claimed Auntie.

"They're worldly as a lot, the whole family. In their efforts to make Adele into what she'll never successfully be, a fashionable daughter, they're only making her awkward. See how she shows she's got elbows."

But of the group of young people down there at the gate Amanthus Harrison was the lovely one. With her cascading, scintillant, positively effulgent hair, amazing skin, laughing eyes, laughing cheeks, laughing lips, she was a radiant creature.

"Amanthus laughs like my flowers in the backyard blow," said Auntie, "she hasn't an idea why she laughs."

"She doesn't need to have," said Mrs. Wistar promptly and astutely. "You ask any man and he'd tell you that an idea would spoil her."

"She's popular," reflected Auntie.

"That's what I'm saying," impatiently. "And her mother is pretty and popular before her."

"And enjoys it," from Auntie. "I've often wondered she hasn't married again. I wish Selina wouldn't think it so much the proper thing to be bookish, Lavinia," a little anxiously, "and to strew magazines around the house so. It isn't as if she actually reads them."

"Selina is quite as popular as she needs to be," said her mother quickly. "She doesn't lack for masculine friends."

"You don't have to take that tone to me, Lavinia," said Auntie sharply. "Nobody has to defend Selina from me."

Here the four friends of Selina down there at the gate embraced her with a sudden rush and ardor.

"She has told them," said Mamma.

"Yes," from Auntie.

And then both were silent, reading alike in the impetuosity of this ardor on the part of these young persons, commiseration, and more, amaze; amaze that she, Selina, their Selina Auboussier Wistar, pretty Selina Wistar, was to go out to be a teacher, the teacher of William Williams Jr.!

A moment later as the group departed silently and as if stunned, and as Selina turned to re-enter her gate, the two ladies at their windows saw Culpepper Buxton appear.

"To be sure, it is Tuesday," from Mrs. Wistar, "and we did tell him we should look for him regularly at dinner on Tuesday evenings. I'm sure I hope there's enough to eat. Viney is still resentful over having to give in to Selina's fad, and have dinner instead of supper at any such hour as six, because the Carters do."

"They got it from England, I daresay," from Auntie. "Mr. Carter went over there last year, you know."

"They got it from Chicago," said Mrs. Wistar tartly. "They visit soap-and-lard friends over there. I hope the roast, warmed over, is big enough to go around. I quite overlooked the fact Culpepper'd be here," vexedly.

"We promised Maria, his mother, you and I both did, Lavinia, when she was down, that we'd look after Culpepper. It isn't every stepmother that would see her dead husband's son through as Maria is doing."

"Maria has means," said Mrs. Wistar. "We'd most of us do wonderful things if we had means. There, look down at them. From Selina's manner and Culpepper's, I believe she has told him, too."

"He's fine looking," from Auntie admiringly. "He's a third as tall again as she is, and Selina is tall enough for a girl herself. He's built on the lines of his country doctor father. He's listening to her in that same close way his father had, too, as though he heard through his gaze. I must say Culpepper is a great favorite of mine. But he's looking at her, rather shocked and pityingly, Lavinia. Is it a very terrible thing we're letting her do?"

Now the dialogue down there at the gate, where this Culpepper towered above the slight young person of Selina, was this:

From him: "Expecting me to dinner? This thing mustn't come to be a nuisance."

"Yes. Why, of course. Auntie would never get over it if you didn't come. It's a serious matter to her, this compact with Cousin Maria. Culpepper?"

"Yes?"

His eyes were a bold blue, his lashes and heavy brows and his hair black. He looked even blatantly ready for the fight with life.

"How—or when did it come to you that you'd have to go to work? Did it just dawn on you sometime? Or did somebody, Cousin Maria for instance, tell you?"

"I haven't gone yet; don't give me undue credit." Culpepper gave that almost insolently contented laugh of his. "I'm making ready. I didn't do so badly at college and now I'm making law school. There wasn't any coming to know about it. I just knew. Every boy knows. He's getting ready from the start."

"I went to-day and asked for a position to teach and got it. I start to-morrow!"

"The devil you—Selina, it slipped out, forgive it. So that's why you wanted to know? I see. Felt you had to?"

She nodded. If a lump requiring to be swallowed was perceptible, she was more willing for Culpepper to suspect than most people. She knew him better, and, too, he was the sort, for all his matter-of-factness, that understands. Or she thought so then.

He gave a slow ejaculation as they went in together, a sort of prolonged h'm-m between his teeth. He held back the gate, too, for her to pass through, with that manner of his, highly indifferent to the act, the manner of one who opens gates for people not because it is the accepted thing to do, but because it pleases him, in this case or that case, to do it.

"Cousin Robert, now, Selina, what does he say to it?"

She was quick in her father's defence. "He doesn't know, Culpepper. Mamma thought it best not to mention it to him just yet."

He shook his head with dire warning. "When you or some other nice feminine lady marries me, Selina, don't think I'm going to submit to any such female managing." He glanced at her a bit oddly as he spoke. Culpepper was extremely fond of Selina. He had known her since she was a child, and came up to his stepmother's farm for visits in the summers with her aunt. He teased her and indulged her both by manner and by act. He was not the sort to bother with people at all if he was not fond of them.

Auntie had come down to meet them and here opened the front door. She adored Culpepper.

"Well, ole Miss?" He kissed her, the only person anyone ever had seen Culpepper kiss, not excepting his stepmother to whom he owed everything. "Safe through another seven days in the wicked city! For another week I've kept my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from lying and slandering. Gimme a clean slate."

"You're mightily sure of yourself, being young," retorted Auntie. "I'll write Maria you're behaving. Selina, your mother says come right upstairs and get yourself ready for supper."

"Dinner, Auntie," from Selina quickly and reproachfully. Selina was scant seventeen.

"Dinner," Auntie corrected herself obediently.

"Dinner," mocked Culpepper with an alarmed air, "how're we plain folk ever going to live up to her, I put it to you, ole miss, If she goes on insisting on these things?"