brought with her to Beulah sheaves of school
certificates, and when she showed them to Gilbert with their hundred per
cent deportment and ninety-eight and seven-eighths per cent scholarship
every month for years, he went out behind the barn and kicked its
foundations savagely for several minutes. She was a sort of continual
Sunday child, with an air of church and cold dinner and sermon-reading
and hymn-singing and early bed. Nobody could fear, as for some
impulsive, reckless little creature, that she would come to a bad end.
Nancy said no one could imagine her as coming to anything, not even
an end!

"You never let mother hear you say these things, Nancy," Kathleen
remarked once, "but really and truly it's just as bad to say them at
all, when you know she wouldn't approve."

"My present object is to be as good as gold in mother's eyes, but there
I stop!" retorted Nancy cheerfully. "Pretty soon I shall get virtuous
enough to go a step further and endeavor to please the angels,--not
Julia's cast-iron angels, but the other angels, who understand and are
patient, because they remember our frames and know that being dust we
are likely to be dusty once in a while. Julia wasn't made of dust. She
was made of--let me see--of skim milk and baked custard (the watery
kind) and rice flour and gelatine, with a very little piece of overripe
banana,--not enough to flavor, just enough to sicken. Stir this up with
weak barley water without putting In a trace of salt, sugar, spice, or
pepper, set it in a cool oven, take it out before it is done, and you
will get Julia."

Nancy was triumphant over this recipe for making Julias, only regretting
that she could never show it to her mother, who, if critical, was always
most appreciative. She did send it in a letter to the Admiral, off in
China, and he, being "none too good for human nature's daily food,"
enjoyed it hugely and never scolded her at all.

Julia's only conversation at this time was on matters concerning Gladys
Ferguson and the Ferguson family. When you are washing dishes in the
sink of the Yellow House in Beulah it is very irritating to hear of
Gladys Ferguson's mother-of-pearl opera glasses, her French maid, her
breakfast on a tray in bed, her diamond ring, her photograph in the
Sunday "Times," her travels abroad, her proficiency in French
and German.

"Don't trot Gladys into the kitchen, for goodness' sake, Julia!"
grumbled Nancy on a warm day. "I don't want her diamond ri