t when you've lived, as I have, in a
different sort of life, with people to whom meals, and the rent, and
their jobs, really matter--this sort of thing doesn't seem _real_. You
feel like bursting out laughing and saying, 'Oh, get out! What's the
difference if I _don't_ make calls, and broaden my vowels, and wear just
this and that, and say just this and that!' It all seems so _tame_."

"Not at all," Chris said, really roused. "Take Betty Doane, now, the
Craigies' cousin. There's nothing conventional about her. There's a girl
who dresses like a man all summer, who ran away from school and tramped
into Hungary dressed as a gipsy, who slapped Joe Brinckerhoff's face for
him last winter, and who says that when she loves a man she's going off
with him--no matter who he is, or whether he's married or not, or
whether she is!"

"I'll tell you what she sounds like to me, Chris, a little saucy girl of
about eight trying to see how naughty she can be! Why, that," said
Norma, eagerly, "that's not _real_. That isn't like house-hunting when
you know you can't pay more than thirty dollars' rent, or surprising
your husband with a new thermos bottle that he didn't think he could
afford!"

"Ah, well, if you _like_ slums, of course!" Chris said, coldly. "But
nothing can prevent your inheriting an enormous sum of money, Norma," he
said, ending the conversation, "and in six months you'll feel very
differently!"

"There is just one chance in ten--one chance in a hundred--that I
might!" she said to herself, going upstairs, after Chris and Acton, who
presently returned to the dining-room, had begun an undertoned
conversation. And with a sudden flood of radiance and happiness at her
heart, she sat down at her desk, and wrote to Wolf.

The note said:

WOLF DEAR:

I have been thinking very seriously, during these serious days,
and I am writing you more earnestly than I ever wrote any one in
my life. I want you to forgive me all my foolishness, and let me
come back to you. I have missed you so bitterly, and thought how
good and how sensible you were, and how you took care of us all
years ago, and gave Rose and me skates that Christmas that you
didn't have your bicycle mended, and how we all sat up and cried
the night Aunt Kate was sick, and you made us chocolate by the
rule on the box. I have been very silly, and I thought I
cared--and perhaps I _did_ care--for somebody else; or at least
I