there."

"Why," asked Pearl quickly.

"Well you see, she got in first, so to speak. She bought the farm
beside the river, and it was her that called the place 'Purple
Springs.' It's an outlandish name, but it seems to kind a' stick.
There's no springs at all, and they are certainly not purple. But she
made the words out of peeled poplar poles, with her axe, and put them
up at the front of her house, facin' the track, and the blamed words
stick. Mind you, she must have spent months twistin' and turnin' them
poles to suit her and get the letters right, and she made a rustic
fence to put them on. They're so foolish you can't forget them. She's
queer, that's all--and she won't tell who she is, nor where she came
from--and she seems to have money."

Pearl looked at him inquiringly. There must be more than that to the
story, she thought.

"The women will tell you more about her--that's sure. They gabble a
lot among themselves about her--I don't know--we think it best to
leave her alone. No woman has any right to live alone the way she
does--it don't look well."

"Well, anyway," Mr. Cowan spoke hurriedly, as one who has been
betrayed into trifling feminine matters, and is anxious to get back to
man's domain, "we'll take you--at seventy-five dollars a month, and
I guess you can get board at Mrs. Zinc's here at about fifteen. That
ain't bad wages for a girl your age. You can stay at Mrs. Zinc's
anyway till you look around--Mrs. Zinc don't want a boarder. Girls can
fit in any place--that's one reason in our neighborhood we like a girl
better--there's no trouble about boardin' them. They can always manage
somehow. Even if things ain't very good--it don't seem to phaze
them--same as a man. We had a man once, and we had to pay him
twenty-five dollars a month extra, and gosh--the airs of him--wanted
a bed to himself and a hot dinner sent to the school. By Gum! and got
it! We'll be lookin' for you at the middle of the month, and you can
stay at Mrs. Zinc's and look around."

When the delegation had departed, Pearl acquainted her mother with the
result of their visit. Mrs. Watson had retired to the kitchen, all of
a flutter, as soon as the visitors came.

"I'm going to Purple Springs, Ma," she said, "to take the school, and
they'll give me seventy-five dollars a month."

Mrs. Watson sat down, dramatically, and applied her print apron to her
eyes--an occasion had come, and Mrs. Watson, true to tradition, would
make the most