radgedy
has crept into my life, so that somtimes I wonder if it is worth while
to live on and suffer, especialy without an Allowence, and being again
obliged to suplicate for the smallest things.

But I am being brave. And, as Carter Brooks wrote me in a recent letter,
acompanying a box of candy:

"After all, Bab, you did your durndest. And if they do not understand, I
do, and I'm proud of you. As for being `blited,' as per your note to me,
remember that I am, also. Why not be blited together?"

This latter, of course, is not serious, as he is eight years older than
I, and even fills in at middle-aged Dinners, being handsome and dressing
well, although poor.

Sis's remarks were interupted by the clamor of the door bell. I placed a
shaking hand over the Frat pin, beneath which my heart was beating only
for HIM. And waited.

What was my dispair to find it but Carter Brooks!

Now there had been a time when to have Carter Brooks sit beside me, as
now, and treat me as fully out in Society, would have thriled me to the
core. But that day had gone. I realized that he was not only to old,
but to flirtatous. He was one who would not look on a woman's Love as
precious, but as a plaything.

"Barbara," he said to me. "I do not beleive that Sister is glad to see
me."

"I don't have to look at you," Sis said, "I can knit."

"Tell me, Barbara," he said to me beseachingly, "am I as hard to look at
as all that?"

"I rather like looking at you," I rejoined with cander. "Across the
room."

He said we were not as agreable as we might be, so he picked up a
magazine and looked at the Automobile advertizments.

"I can't aford a car," he said. "Don't listen to me, either of you.
I'm only talking to myself. But I like to read the ads. Hello, here's a
snappy one for five hundred and fifty. Let me see. If I gave up a
couple of Clubs, and smokeing, and flours to DEBUTANTES--except Barbara,
because I intend to buy every pozy in town when she comes out--I
might----"

"Carter," I said, "will you let me see that ad?"

Now the reason I had asked for it was this: in the book the Girl
Detective had a small but powerful car, and she could do anything with
it, even going up the Court House steps once in it and interupting a
trial at the criticle moment.

But I did not, at that time, expect to more than wish for such a
vehical. How pleasant, my heart said, to have a car holding to, and
since there was to be no bathing, et cetera, and I