oks are foolish by _your_ experience, Miss
Vail." Emma Ellis was glowing from the Irishman's championship.

Jane was still for a moment. "No; I don't suppose I can prove it by any
experience I've had in the past," she said, slowly, "but I can prove it
by an experience I'm going to have!"

"Now what do you mean by that?" Daragh wanted to know. "Are you telling
your fortune?"

Jane sat up straight, warm-cheeked, excited. "No, but I'm going out,
alone and unaided, under a neat new name, with some cheap, plain clothes
in a cheap, plain trunk, to Chicago, with fifty dollars only between me
and the cold world,--and see what I see!"

"Well, now, God save us, but that's the mad plan, surely!"

"It isn't mad at all! I want a little change,--I've been working like a
dynamo--and it will be loads of fun and I'll get corking copy out of it."

"It won't be a fair test," the superintendent protested. "You'll be--you,
all the time."

"That's very nice of you," Jane gave her her glad boy's grin, "but I
won't be. Don't you suppose I have imagination enough to project myself
into another type? For a month I'll support myself in any way I can,
nursery governess, mother's helper, upstair-work, shop, anything I can
get. I'll _be_ that sort of girl, dress, diction, everything. I'll
write a truthful bulletin of my luck to you two, but you won't have any
address, and no one will know that--let's see ... _Edna Miles_--isn't
that reasonable?--that Edna Miles is the lucky Jane Vail who wrote
_Cross Your Heart_ and has a wicked balance in the bank!" She pulled
herself up out of the depths of the great chair and put on her furs.
"I'm quite keen about it! It's going to be more fun than anything I've
ever done. Tell Jane good-by, old dears! You'll hear from Edna Miles
before long!"

"Wait a bit till we talk it over," said Daragh. "'Tis a wild plan, I'm
telling you, will waste your time and----"

But Jane was out of the door, with only the echo of her laugh behind her.

"I don't think she'll really do it," said Miss Ellis. "When she comes to
think it over, and realizes how uncomfortable she'll be----"

"She'll be doing it if she says she will," said the Irishman, gloomily,
"and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't be stopping
her, the way she----"

Jane thrust her bright head in at the door again. "I'll play fair, and
I'll prove my point,--that you see pretty much what you look for, that
you get pretty nearly what you giv