rning her page.

"Mother's got something on her mind. I wonder why she doesn't consult
me," she thought, characteristically; but at the moment she had too many
weighty affairs on her own mind to give the matter her usual attention.

Occasionally Kate wandered into the sewing-room in the rather vague way
that had come to her recently, quite unlike her usual brisk alertness.

"What are you up to, you and Mag?" she asked on one of these occasions.
"You seem to be turning out garments by the wholesale." She fingered the
dainty pile of fineries on the bed. "What a pretty petticoat! And a
peignoir to match. How grand they are! And what's this--no sleeves in
it, no waist to speak of--Why, it's a ball-dress! Where in the world
have you ever seen a ball-dress, Jemmy girl?"

"In a magazine." Jemima spoke rather anxiously, with a mouth full of
pins. "Does it look all right, Mother? Did you use to wear as--as little
as that at a ball?"

"Well, not quite as little, perhaps," murmured Kate--the frock in her
hand was of the Empire period. "Fashions change, however, and it looks
very pretty. But what do you need with such a dress at Storm, dear?"

The girl said rather tensely, "Mother, do you expect Jacqueline and me
to spend the rest of our lives at Storm?"

Kate's eyes dropped. "No," she answered in a low voice. She wondered
whether the time had come to make the announcement she dreaded.

"Well, then!" said Jemima with a breath of relief. "You see I believe in
being forehanded. Young ladies in society need lots of clothes, don't
they?"

"You are not exactly young ladies in society."

"Not yet. But we mean to be," said Jemima, quietly.

Kate winced. She had not forgotten it, the thing her daughter called
"society"; the little, cruel, careless, prurient world she had left far
behind her and thought well lost. To Jemima it meant balls and beaux and
gaiety. To her it meant the faces of women, life-long friends, turned
upon her blank and frozen as she walked down a church aisle carrying the
child she had named for her lover. Wider, kinder worlds were open to her
children, surely, the world of books, of travel, of new acquaintance.
But the thing Jemima craved, the simple, trivial, pleasure-filled
neighborhood life that made her own girlhood bright to remember--of this
she had deprived her children forever.

She caught the girl to her in a gesture of protection that was almost
fierce. "What does it matter? Haven't you been happ