in a world of comers and goers
of every origin. Mrs. Forsyth especially liked them for a certain
quality, but what this quality was she could not very well say. They
were a mother with two daughters, not quite old maids, but on the way
to it, and there was very intermittently the apparently bachelor
brother of the girls; at the office Mrs. Forsyth verified her
conjecture that he was some sort of minister. One could see they were
all gentlefolks, though the girls were not of the last cry of fashion.
They were very nice to their mother, and you could tell that they must
have been coming with her for years.

At this point in her study of them for her husband's amusement she
realized that Charlotte had been coming to the storage with her nearly
all her life, and that more and more the child had taken charge of the
uneventual inspection of the things. She was shocked to think that she
had let this happen, and now she commanded her husband to say whether
Charlotte would grow into a storage old maid like those good girls.

Forsyth said, Probably not before her time; but he allowed it was a
point to be considered.

Very well, then, Mrs. Forsyth said, the child should never go again;
that was all. She had strongly confirmed herself in this resolution
when one day she not only let the child go again, but she let her go
alone. The child was now between seventeen and eighteen, rather tall,
grave, pretty, with the dull brown hair that goes so well with
dreaming blue eyes, and of a stiff grace. She had not come out yet,
because she had always been out, handing cakes at her father's studio
teas long before she could remember not doing it, and later pouring
for her mother with rather a quelling air as she got toward fifteen.
During these years the family had been going and coming between Europe
and America; they did not know perfectly why, except that it was
easier than not.

More and more there was a peculiarity in the goods selected by
Charlotte for sending home, which her mother one day noted. "How is
it, Charlotte, that you always send exactly the things I want, and
when you get your own things here you don't know whether they are what
you wanted or not?"

"Because I don't know when I send them. I don't choose them; I can't."

"But you choose the right things for me?"

"No, I don't, mother. I just take what comes first, and you always
like it."

"Now, that is nonsense, Charlotte. I can't have you telling me such a
thing