ind's better than ours will ever be! Uncle John went to
Dr. Stanchon about it and he said that mamma was in perfect health,
good for twenty-five years more----"

"She always says 'twenty-two,'" Wilhelmina interrupted.

"--And that she was not to be bothered or crossed in any way. He said
that at her age women often took odd fancies, and that with a woman so
capable and determined as mamma, the best thing was to give her her
way. 'Mind you, now, Appleyard,' he said, 'your sister consulted me
long before you did, and whatever she does I justify in every way!'"

"Well, of course, with mamma, there's nothing else to do," sighed
Wilhelmina, "but--five hundred dollars a year! Why, it's impossible!
She can't travel on that!"

"No, but she can't starve, either," said Elliot, philosophically, "and
everybody was always telling her she could have earned her own living
in a dozen ways--perhaps she's going to do that."

"Oh, Elly!" cried poor Wilhelmina. He turned to go, then picked up a
small blue-print from the top of a pile on a camera.

"What's all this?"

"Oh, that's one of the photographs the children are always taking
nowadays. That one--why, that's one of mamma and the gypsies, that I
told you about! See, there's the gypsy woman handing her out the soup.
They get very clear prints, now, don't they?"

"But what an extraordinary likeness!" he exclaimed. "Isn't it
remarkable!"

"Oh, you mean mamma and the gypsy," she said indifferently. "Yes, the
children both noticed it at once. The other gypsies did, too, I'm
sure, from the way they pointed and stared. Well, she always was that
dark type, you know. Would you like to keep it?"

"Thanks, if you don't mind," he said, and put it carefully in his
pocketbook. "It's better of mamma than any of the professional ones."

* * * * *

Nobody who attended the great dinner-party given for Mrs. Elliot
Lestrange on the occasion of her fiftieth birthday will forget it
readily. It was as much a public as a private function, and around the
great hotel dining-room used for the occasion stood many different
tables for many different classes of people. Between the party of
girls trained years ago in her trade-school and the long table of
boards of directors of different movements in which she had long been
prominent, sat the entire cast of one of the theatrical successes of
the season, the play being openly founded on one of the dramatic
incid