interests, they looked
their surprise that she should have such intelligent knowledge
concerning these matters.

Altogether it was an evening full of private fun on her part. There was
to be such a curious turn about of position, she realized so fully that
it would be such unutterable surprise to the people, that it was
impossible not to feel amused, and to treasure up certain words and
phrases that would sound very queerly to the speakers thereof, if they
remembered them when those said changes became manifest to the eyes of
the world.

There was more than fun to be gotten out of the evening; she watched the
young people with eager interest. She was to be a great deal to these
young people; she must try to understand them, to win them. She wanted
to be a help, a comfort, a guide. She had wonderful plans and aims. She
blessed Flossy in her heart for this opportunity to study her lesson
before it should be time to practise it.

That same Flossy afforded her help in another direction. There was no
hiding the hold that she had gotten, not only on those young men of her
class, but those of their friends that they had brought within her
influence. There was no disguising the fact, that among the young ladies
she was a favorite; one whom they liked to have among them, whom they
liked to please. How had she done it all?

"I can never be Flossy," Marion said to herself, an amused smile
hovering around her lips meanwhile, at the thought that she should have
a shadow of desire to become their little Flossy. "But it is worth while
to steal her secret of success, if I can, and practise it."

Close watching revealed a good deal of the secret; as much of it at
least as could be put into words. Evidently the little lady had the
power of making other people's interests her own for the time being; of
impressing the one with whom she came in contact, with a sense of his
own importance, in her eyes; at least she was interested in what he said
and did, and in what interested him. She could enter into the minute
details of a matter which did not concern her in the least, with such
apparent interest and desire to know all that was to be known about it,
that one could hardly help the feeling that certainly the subject was
worthy of attention.

Then her face spoke for her; it could cloud in an instant in sympathy
with any sort of trouble or anxiety, and sparkle with happy smiles in
the very next second over some bit of brightness that w