ry, when she found herself again
among her old haunts and was going the rounds of them, the morning
after her return home. She came in at last to her mother, flushed and
warm.

"Mother, what are we going away for?" she began.

"Your father knows. I don't. Men never know when they are well off."

"Do women?"

"I used to think so."

"Is it as pleasant in England as it is here?"

"Depends on where you are placed, I suppose, and _how_ you are placed.
How can I tell? I have never been in England."

"Mother, we have got the prettiest little calf in the barn that you
ever saw."

"In the barn! A queer place for a calf to be, it seems to me."

"Yes, because they want to keep it from the cow. Johnson is going to
rear it, he says. I am so glad it is not to be killed! It is spotted,
mother; all red and white; and so prettily spotted!"

An inarticulate sound from Mrs. Copley, which might mean anything.

"And, mother, I have been getting the eggs. And Johnson has a hen
setting. We shall have chickens pretty soon."

"Dolly Copley, how old are you?"

"Sixteen last Christmas, mother."

"And seventeen next Christmas."

"Yes, ma'am, but next Christmas is not come yet."

"Seems to me, it is near enough for you to be something besides a
child."

"What's the harm, mother?"

"Harm?" said Mrs. Copley with a sharp accent; "why, when one has a
woman's work to do, one had better be a woman to do it. How is a child
to fill a woman's place?"

"I have only a child's place to fill, just now," said Dolly merrily. "I
have no woman's work to do, mother."

"Yes, you have. You have got to go into society, and play your part in
society, and be married by and by; and _then_ you'll know that a
woman's part isn't so easy to play."

Dolly looked grave.

"But we are going to England, mother; where we know nobody. I don't see
how we are to go into much society."

"Do you suppose," said Mrs. Copley very irately, "that with your
father's position his wife and daughter will not be visited and receive
invitations? That is the one thing that reconciles me to going. We
shall have a very different sort of society from what we have here. Why
you will go to court, Dolly; you will be presented; and of course you
will see nothing but people of the very best circles."

"I don't care about going to court."

"Why not? You are a goose; you know nothing about it. Why don't you
want to go to court? Your father's daughter may, as well as some oth