of fiction, she addressed herself to Balzac and Hugo. The personalities
of favorite contemporaneous writers interested her tremendously, and she
sought old files of literary periodicals that she might inform herself
as to their methods of work. She kept Lamb and Stevenson on the stand by
her bed and read them religiously every night. There had never been any
fun like this! Her enjoyment of this secret inner life was so satisfying
that she wished no one might ever know of it. She wrote and rewrote
sentences and paragraphs, thrust them away into the drawers of the long
table in her room to mellow--she had got this phrase from Nan,--and then
dug them out in despair that they seemed so lifeless. She planned no end
of books and confidently set down titles for these unborn masterpieces.
Nan and Rose marked the change in her. At times she sat with her chin
in her hand staring into vacancy. The two women speculated about this
and wondered whether her young soul was not in the throes of a first
love affair.

Now that fortune smiled upon her father Phil's happiness marked new
attitudes, with no cloud to darken the misty-blue horizons of her
dreams. She meant to be very good to her father. And as to his marrying
Nan, she was giving much time to plots for furthering their romance.

"Fred Holton was looking for you the other day. I suppose you haven't
seen him."

"Yes; he came to Indianapolis and saw me at the hotel. I remember that
he was at your party, but I don't recall how you got acquainted with
him?"

Phil laughed.

"Oh, that last night we camped at Turkey Run I wandered off by myself
and met him in the funniest fashion, over by the Holton barn. They were
having a dance--Charlie and Ethel, and Fred was watching the revel from
afar, and saw me dancing like an idiot round the corn-shocks. And I
talked to him across the fence and watched the dance in the barn until
you blew the horn. I didn't tell you about it because it seemed so
silly--and then I thought you wouldn't like my striking up acquaintances
with those people. But Fred is nice, I think."

"He seems to be a very earnest young person. He came to me on a business
matter in a spirit that is to his credit."

Phil had decided, in view of Nan's unlooked-for arraignment, to give her
father another chance to express himself as to her further social
relations with the Holtons.

"Daddy dear, I want you to tell me honestly whether you have any feeling
about those people,