married," pursued the girl,
bending nearer to the mirror and returning her own gaze with sympathy.

"Why, Ethel!" Mrs. Weaver's voice was full of astonished disapproval. "I
should think you'd be ashamed to say such a thing."

"I didn't say it; Rob said it," returned the girl, making a little
grimace at herself in the glass.

"Well, I have my opinion of a young man that will say such a thing to a
girl. If a girl's worth having, she's worth coming after."

Mrs. Weaver made this latter announcement with an air of triumph in its
triteness. Her daughter gave a little sniff of contempt.

"Well, if a fellow's worth having, isn't he worth going to?" she asked
with would-be flippancy.

"Why, Ethel Imogen Weaver!" Mrs. Weaver repeated her daughter's name
slowly, as if she hoped its length might arouse in the owner some sense
of her worth. "I never did hear the like."

The girl left the mirror, and seated herself in a chair in front of her
mother.

"It'll cost Rob a hundred dollars to come here and go back to
California, and a hundred dollars goes a long way toward fixing up.
Besides, he'll lose his job. I'd just as soon go out there as have him
come here. If people don't like it they--they needn't."

The girl's fresh young voice began to thicken, and she glanced about in
restless search of diversion from impending tears.

"Well, girls do act awful strange these days."

Mrs. Weaver took warning from her daughter's tone and divided her
disapproval by multiplying its denominator.

"Yes, they do. They act sometimes as if they had a little sense,"
retorted Ethel huskily.

"Well, I don't know as I call it sense to pick up and run after a man,
even if you're engaged to him; do you, mother?"

Old Mrs. Moxom started nervously at her daughter-in-law's appeal.

"Well, it does seem a long way to go on--on an uncertainty, Ethel," she
faltered.

The girl turned a flushed, indignant face upon her grandmother.

"Well, I hope you don't mean to call Rob an uncertainty?" she demanded
angrily.

"Oh, no; I don't mean that," pleaded the old woman. "I haven't got
anything agen' Rob. I don't suppose he's any more uncertain than--than
the rest of them. I"--

"Why, grandmother Moxom," interrupted the girl, "how you talk! I'm sure
father isn't an uncertainty, and there wasn't anything uncertain about
grandfather Moxom. To tell the honest truth, I think they're just about
as certain as we are."

The old woman got up and began to mo