uired to round out her
life, and fit her to ultimately assume the entire control of her
father's home.

But all this was entirely beyond Mrs. Stewart's comprehension. Her own
early life had been passed in a small New Jersey village in very humble
surroundings. She had been educated in the little grammar school, going
later to an adjoining town for a year at high-school. In her home,
domestic help of any sort had been unknown, she and her mother, an
earnest, hard-working woman, having performed all the household work.
There were no traditions connected with that simple home; it was just an
everyday round of commonplace duties, accepted as a matter of course.
Then Mrs. Stewart, at that time "pretty Kitty Snyder," went as a sort of
"mother's helper" to a lady residing in Elizabeth, whose brother was in
a New Jersey College. Upon one of his visits to his sister he had
brought Peyton Stewart home for a visit: Peyton, the happy-go-lucky,
irresponsible madcap. Kitty Snyder's buxom beauty had turned all that
was left to be turned of his shallow head and she had become Mrs. Peyton
Stewart within a month.

The rest has been told elsewhere. For a good many years she had "just
lived around" as she expressed it, her income from her husband's share
of the very comfortable little fortune left him by his father, being a
vast deal more than she had ever dreamed of in her youthful days. She
felt very affluent. All things considered, it was quite as well that
Peyton had quit this earthly scene after two years of married life for
"Kitty" had rapidly developed extravagant tastes and there were many
"scenes." Her old associates saw her no more, and later the new ones
often wondered why the dashing young widow did not marry again.

They did not suspect how often her plans laid to that end had
misscarried, for her ambitions were entirely out of proportion to her
qualifications.

Now, however, chance had brought her once more in touch with her
husband's family, and she was resolved to make hay while the sun shone.
If Neil Stewart had not been an odd mixture of manly strength and
child-like simplicity, exceptional executive ability and credulity,
kindliness and quick temper, he would never in the wide world have
become responsible for the state of affairs at present turning his old
home topsy-turvy, and in a fair way to undo all the good works of
others, and certainly make Peggy extremely unhappy.

But he had "made a confounded mess of the