't got anybody else--"

"Oh, she won't get anybody else, Miss Persis. Nobody else would suit
her."

Diantha looked taller and more mature than ever in a plain, loosely
fitting blue serge. Persis appraised it with judicial eye. "Ready
made, ain't it, Diantha?"

The girl blushed tempestuously, "Yes, father bought it for me in the
city. Mother said-- That other dress, you know--"

"Yes, I s'pose your mother thought we'd ought to have consulted her,
instead of going ahead. Well, tell her I'm busy for the rest of this
week, Diantha, and for next, up till Friday."

If this were a dismissal, Diantha failed to accept it. She perched on
the arm of the big chair and watched with fascinated eyes the heavy
shears biting their way through a filmy fabric of a delicate gray
shade. "How pretty!" Diantha murmured. Then with more animation.
"Thad West says you're the best dressmaker anywhere around here. He
says that you could make lots of money in the city."

"I'm quite set up by his good opinion--seeing he knows so much about
it." That Persis' dry retort veiled sarcasm was far from Diantha's
thought. She continued guilelessly.

"He's got such good taste, Thad has. Don't you think men have better
taste than women, Miss Persis? All women care about is following the
styles, and men think whether the way you do your hair is becoming or
not. If a thing isn't pretty, they don't care a bit about its being
stylish."

Persis glanced up from her cutting. She had noticed this phenomenon
before, the impulse of the girl who feels a proprietary interest in
some particular male, to indulge in sweeping generalities concerning
the opposite sex. When Persis had schemed to bring about the dramatic
encounter between Thad West and the Diantha newly emerged from the
chrysalis stage, she had but one end in view; to show the young man the
essential absurdity of any sentimental acquaintance between himself and
the mother of this blooming maid. With a vague uneasiness she realized
the possibility that she had overshot the mark.

"I think Thad dresses beautifully himself," Diantha purred on. "When
you're little you can't see but what men's clothes are all alike.
Isn't that funny? Now, Thad's neckties--"

There was a heavy step upon the porch, and Persis was spared further
harrowing details. "Oh, it's the doctor," Diantha cried, with a sigh
for her interrupted confidences. "Is anybody sick?"

"Nobody here," said Persis, and she