nd three dollars additional to pay for the
refreshments she had eaten, accompanying it with a polite little note
of explanation.

The result was an explosion that nearly lifted the asphalt from the
Drive; and Carmen, covered with tears and confusion, was given to
understand by the irate Mrs. Hawley-Crowles that her conduct was as
reprehensible as if she had attacked the eminent Mrs. Gannette with an
axe. Whereupon the sorrowing Carmen packed her effects and prepared to
depart from the presence of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, to the terrified
consternation of the latter, who alternately prostrated herself before
the girl and the offended Mrs. Gannette, and at length, after many
days of perspiring effort and voluminous explanation, succeeded in
restoring peace.

When the Beaubien, who had become the girl's confidante, learned the
story, she laughed till her sides ached. And then her lips set, and
her face grew terribly hard, and she muttered, "Fools!" But she smiled
again as she gathered the penitent girl in her arms, and kissed her.

"You will learn many things, dearie, before you are through with New
York. And," she added, her brow again clouding, "you _will_ be through
with it--some day!"

That evening she repeated the story at her table, and Gannette, who
happened to be present, swore between roars of laughter that he would
use it as a club over his wife, should she ever again trap him in any
of his numerous indiscretions.

Again, the girl's odd views of life and its meaning which, despite her
efforts, she could not refrain from voicing now and then, caused the
worldly Mrs. Hawley-Crowles much consternation. Carmen tried
desperately to be discreet. Even Harris advised her to listen much,
but say little; and she strove hard to obey. But she would forget and
hurl the newspapers from her with exclamations of horror over their
red-inked depictions of mortal frailty--she would flatly refuse to
discuss crime or disease--and she would comment disparagingly at too
frequent intervals on the littleness of human aims and the emptiness
of the peacock-life which she saw manifested about her. "I don't
understand--I can't," she would say, when she was alone with the
Beaubien. "Why, with the wonderful opportunities which you rich people
have, how can you--oh, how can you toss them aside for the frivolities
and littleness that you all seem to be striving for! It seems to me
you must be mad--_loco_! And I know you are, for you are simply