before yesterday."

They had been making their way through the Park; the searer, yellower
Park of late November. It looked duller and more cheerless than David
ever remembered it. The leaves rattled on the trees, and the sun went
down suddenly.

"This is Central Park," he said. "In the spring it's very beautiful
here, and all the people you know go motoring or driving in the
afternoon."

He bowed to his mother's milliner in a little French runabout. The
Frenchman stared frankly at the baby blue tam-o'-shanter and the
tangled golden head it surmounted.

"Joseph could make you a peachy tam-o'-shanter looking thing of blue
velvet; I'll bet I could draw him a picture to copy. Your Uncle David,
you know, is an artist of a sort."

For the first time since their incongruous association began the child
met his smile; her face relaxed ever so little, and the lips quivered,
but she smiled a shy, little dawning smile. There was trust in it and
confidence. David put out his hand to pat hers, but thought better of
it.

"Eleanor," he said, "my mother knows our only living Ex-president, and
the Countess of Warwick, one Vanderbilt, two Astors, and she's met Sir
Gilbert Parker, and Rudyard Kipling. She also knows many of the stars
and satellites of upper Fifth Avenue. She has, as well, family
connections of so much weight and stolidity that their very approach,
singly or in conjunction, shakes the earth underneath them.--I wish we
could meet them all, Eleanor, every blessed one of them."

CHAPTER II

THE COOPERATIVE PARENTS

"I wonder how a place like this apartment will look to her," Beulah
said thoughtfully. "I wonder if it will seem elegant, or cramped to
death. I wonder if she will take to it kindly, or with an ill
concealed contempt for its limitations."

"The poor little thing will probably be so frightened and homesick by
the time David gets her here, that she won't know what kind of a place
she's arrived at," Gertrude suggested. "Oh, I wouldn't be in your
shoes for the next few days for anything in the world, Beulah Page;
would you, Margaret?"

The third girl in the group smiled.

"I don't know," she said thoughtfully. "It would be rather fun to
begin it."

"I'd rather have her for the first two months, and get it over with,"
Beulah said decisively. "It'll be hanging over your head long after my
ordeal is over, and by the time I have to have her again she'll be
absolutely in training. You don't come u