ging,
and my aunt would be so glad if you could come with your mother."

She put down her aunt's card on the table near her, while Mela gurgled,
as if it were the best joke: "Oh, my! Mother never goes anywhere; you
couldn't get her out for love or money." But she was herself overwhelmed
with a simple joy at Margaret's politeness, and showed it in a sensuous
way, like a child, as if she had been tickled. She came closer to
Margaret and seemed about to fawn physically upon her.

"Ain't she just as lovely as she can live?" she demanded of her sister
when Margaret was gone.

"I don't know," said Christine. "I guess she wanted to know who Mr.
Beaton had been lending her banjo to."

"Pshaw! Do you suppose she's in love with him?" asked Mela, and then
she broke into her hoarse laugh at the look her sister gave her. "Well,
don't eat me, Christine! I wonder who she is, anyway? I'm goun' to git
it out of Mr. Beaton the next time he calls. I guess she's somebody.
Mrs. Mandel can tell. I wish that old friend of hers would hurry up and
git well--or something. But I guess we appeared about as well as she
did. I could see she was afraid of you, Christine. I reckon it's gittun'
around a little about father; and when it does I don't believe we shall
want for callers. Say, are you goun'? To that concert of theirs?"

"I don't know. Not till I know who they are first."

"Well, we've got to hump ourselves if we're goun' to find out before
Tuesday."

As she went home Margaret felt wrought in her that most incredible of
the miracles, which, nevertheless, any one may make his experience. She
felt kindly to these girls because she had tried to make them happy, and
she hoped that in the interest she had shown there had been none of the
poison of flattery. She was aware that this was a risk she ran in such
an attempt to do good. If she had escaped this effect she was willing to
leave the rest with Providence.

VIII.

The notion that a girl of Margaret Vance's traditions would naturally
form of girls like Christine and Mela Dryfoos would be that they were
abashed in the presence of the new conditions of their lives, and that
they must receive the advance she had made them with a certain grateful
humility. However they received it, she had made it upon principle, from
a romantic conception of duty; but this was the way she imagined they
would receive it, because she thought that she would have done so if she
had been as ignorant an