hey needed no dower with their good
looks, for they were all pretty. The Madison Avenue mansion gave them the
open sesame into good society--choice society, in fact--and there some
wealthy trio of unattached young men must see and fall in love with them.

And the girls understood this, too--right down to fourteen-year-old
Flossie. They all three knew that to "pay poor papa" for reckless
expenditures now, they must sooner or later capture moneyed husbands.

So, there was more than one reason why the three Starkweather girls leaped
immediately from childhood into full-blown womanhood. Flossie had already
privately studied the characters--and possible bank accounts--of the boys
of her acquaintance, to decide upon whom she should smile her sweetest.

These facts--save that the mansion was enormous--were hidden from Helen
when she arose on the first morning of her city experience. She had slept
soundly and sweetly. Even the rustling steps on the ghost walk had not
bothered her for long.

Used to being up and out by sunrise, she could not easily fall in with
city ways. She hustled out of bed soon after daybreak, took a cold sponge,
which made her body tingle delightfully, and got into her clothes as
rapidly as any boy.

She had only the shoddy-looking brown traveling dress to wear, and the
out-of-date hat. But she put them on, and ventured downstairs, intent upon
going out for a walk before breakfast.

The solemn clock in the hall chimed seven as she found her way down the
lower flight of front stairs. As she came through the curtain-hung halls
and down the stairs, not a soul did she meet until she reached the front
hall. There a rather decrepit-looking man, with a bleared eye, and dressed
in decent black, hobbled out of a parlor to meet her.

"Bless me!" he ejaculated. "What--what--what----"

"I am Helen Morrell," said the girl from Sunset Ranch, smiling, and
judging that this must be the butler of whom the housekeeper had spoken
the night before. "I have just come to visit my uncle and cousins."

"Bless me!" said the old man again. "Gregson told me. Proud to see you,
Miss. But--you're dressed to go out, Miss?"

"For a walk, sir," replied Helen, nodding.

"At this hour? Bless me--bless me--bless me----"

He seemed apt to run off in this style, in an unending string of mild
expletives. His head shook and his hands seemed palsied. But he was a
polite old man.

"I beg of you, Miss, don't go out without a bit of br