becoming pleased with ourselves."

"That's the worst of it--we do look up to you," admitted he.
"But--we're learning better."

"YOU'VE already learned better--you personally, I mean. I think that
when you compare me, for instance, with a girl like Selma Gordon, you
look down on me."

"Don't you, yourself, feel that any woman who is self-supporting and
free is your superior?"

"In some moods, I do," replied Jane. "In other moods, I feel as I was
brought up to feel."

They talked on and on, she detaining him without seeming to do so. She
felt proud of her adroitness. But the truth was that his stopping on
for nearly two hours was almost altogether a tribute to her physical
charm--though Victor was unconscious of it. When the afternoon was
drawing on toward the time for her father to come, she reluctantly let
him go. She said:

"But you'll come again?"

"I can't do that," replied he regretfully. "I could not come to your
father's house and continue free. I must be able to say what I
honestly think, without any restraint."

"I understand," said she. "And I want you to say and to write what you
believe to be true and right. But--we'll see each other again. I'm
sure we are going to be friends."

His expression as he bade her good-by told her that she had won his
respect and his liking. She had a suspicion that she did not deserve
either; but she was full of good resolutions, and assured herself she
soon would be what she had pretended--that her pretenses were not
exactly false, only somewhat premature.

At dinner that evening she said to her father:

"I think I ought to do something beside enjoy myself. I've decided to
go down among the poor people and see whether I can't help them in some
way."

"You'd better keep away from that part of town," advised her father.
"They live awful dirty, and you might catch some disease. If you want
to do anything for the poor, send a check to our minister or to the
charity society. There's two kinds of poor--those that are working
hard and saving their money and getting up out of the dirt, and those
that haven't got no spunk or get-up. The first kind don't need help,
and the second don't deserve it."

"But there are the children, popsy," urged Jane. "The children of the
no-account poor ought to have a chance."

"I don't reckon there ever was a more shiftless, do-easy pair than my
father and mother," rejoined Martin Hastings. "They were what set me
to ju