rather soggy, a
creature of inertia, chocolate caramels and a tendency to ritualism
which her mother could not have foreseen when she encouraged her
entering the Episcopal communion ("I don't mind candles so much," said
Mrs. Dickett, "but I must say I think it's very bad taste to call
yourself an American Catholic, when you can't help but feel that
Catholics should be foreigners").

Kathryn her mother pronounced "a very ordinary girl, very ordinary
indeed," up to the day when she was graduated, head of her class, at
the State normal-school. She showed every sign, even after that, of
snapping at the bait of a middle-aged widower with three children,
simply because his hook was labelled _New York_; but when it became
known, as a result of herculean detective efforts on Mrs. Dickett's
part, that he employed but one servant, insisted upon the payment of
what he termed "spot cash" for every article purchased in his
establishment, and disapproved of the theatre, Kathryn yielded to
reason and henceforth consulted her mother at each successive stage of
her growing career until such consultation was frankly deprecated by
the fountain-head itself.

But Molly was neither soggy nor ordinary, being distinctly handsome in
a grey-eyed, black-haired, white-skinned way, a clever student, an
original conversationalist--in short, a personality. Unlike the usual
victim to an older and a younger sister, she managed to get quite her
fair share of the family dignities and finances--was in fact accused by
her sisters of using undue influence in persuading her father to send
her to a woman's college. It is most characteristic of her that at
this accusation she refused the favour, interested her teachers in her
cause so that they procured her a full scholarship at the college of
her choice, and actually completed a four years' course there with no
other means than her share of the twenty-five dollars yearly placed to
his daughters' bank accounts by their father since the birth of each.
On this slender sum, plus the accruing interest, eked out by college
journalism, which began to be mentionable in those years--the early
90's--strengthened further in the last terms by tutoring, did Molly
Dickett triumphantly assert her independence, and I tell it of her at
this length so that none may throw "rolling stones" at her, in what
followed. A young woman of eighteen who can set her course in solitude
and steer it alone, friendless, except for wha