ne had dressed
for it in the best she had to wear at that time of day.

Selma saw the company while there was still time for her to draw back
and descend into the woods. But she knew little about
conventionalities, and she cared not at all about them. She had come
to see Jane; she conducted herself precisely as she would have expected
any one to act who came to see her at any time. She marched straight
across the lawn. The hostess, the fashionable visitors, the
fashionable guests soon centered upon the extraordinary figure moving
toward them under that blazing sun. The figure was extraordinary not
for dress--the dress was plain and unconspicuous--but for that
expression of the free and the untamed, the lack of self-consciousness
so rarely seen except in children and animals. Jane rushed to the
steps to welcome her, seized her extended hands and kissed her with as
much enthusiasm as she kissed Jane. There was sincerity in this
greeting of Jane's; but there was pose, also. Here was one of those
chances to do the unconventional, the democratic thing.

"What a glorious surprise!" cried Jane. "You'll stop for lunch, of
course?" Then to the girls nearest them: "This is Selma Gordon, who
writes for the New Day."

Pronouncing of names--smiles--bows--veiled glances of
curiosity--several young women exchanging whispered comments of
amusement. And to be sure, Selma, in that simple costume, gloveless,
with dusty shoes and blown hair, did look very much out of place. But
then Selma would have looked, in a sense, out of place anywhere but in
a wilderness with perhaps a few tents and a half-tamed herd as
background. In another sense, she seemed in place anywhere as any
natural object must.

"I don't eat lunch," said Selma. "But I'll stay if you'll put me next
to you and let me talk to you."

She did not realize what an upsetting of order and precedence this
request, which seemed so simple to her, involved. Jane hesitated, but
only for a fraction of a second. "Why, certainly," said she. "Now
that I've got you I'd not let you go in any circumstances."

Selma was gazing around at the other girls with the frank and pleased
curiosity of a child. "Gracious, what pretty clothes!" she cried--she
was addressing Miss Clearwater, of Cincinnati. "I've read about this
sort of thing in novels and in society columns of newspapers. But I
never saw it before. ISN'T it interesting!"

Miss Clearwater, whose father was a Unit