mplation of a great mass of pink roses on the table, "I feel as
though I were on the point of beginning to live at last. All my days I
have spent dashing about madly in search of a good time. Now--well,
now I shall go where I'm sent, live for weeks, maybe, without a bath,
sleep in my clothes in any old place, when I sleep at all; but I'm
crazy, simply crazy to get over there and begin."

It was then that Elliott began dimly to sense a predicament. Even then
she didn't recognize it for an _impasse_. Such things didn't happen to
Elliott Cameron. But she did wish that Quincy had selected another
time for isolating her Uncle James's house. Not that she particularly
desired to spend a year, or a fraction of a year, with the James
Camerons, but they were preferable to her Uncle Robert's family, on
the principle that ills you know and understand make a safer venture
than a jump in the dark. Nothing radical was wrong with the Robert
Camerons except that they were dark horses. They lived farther away
than the other Camerons, which wouldn't have mattered--geography
seldom bothered a Cameron--if they hadn't chosen to let it. On second
thoughts, perhaps that, however, was exactly what did matter. Elliott
understood that the Robert Camerons were poor. More than once she had
heard her father say he feared "Bob was hard up." But Bob was as proud
as he was hard up; Elliott knew that Father had never succeeded in
lending him any money.

She let these things pass through her mind as she reviewed the
situation. Proud and independent and poor--those were worthy
qualities, but they did not make any family interesting. They were
more apt, Elliott thought, to make it uninteresting. No, the Robert
Camerons were out of the question, kindly though they might be. If she
must spend a year outside her own home, away from her father-comrade,
she preferred to spend it with her own sort.

There is this to be said for Elliott Cameron; she had no mother, had
had no mother since she could remember. The mother Elliott could not
remember had been a very lovely person, and as broad-minded as she was
charming. Elliott had her mother's charm, a personal magnetism that
twined people around her little finger, but she was essentially
narrow-minded. With Elliott it was a matter of upbringing, of
coming-up rather, since within somewhat wide limits her upbringing
had, after all, been largely in her own hands. Henry Cameron had had
neither the heart nor the will