self, also. It was
only a matter of time, he declared, before the oil-well would yield rich
profit. When that time arrived, he would maintain two establishments,
the old one for Miss Kippy, and a new and elegant one for themselves.
Mr. Opp used the hole in the ground as a telescope through which he
viewed the stars of the future.

But when he was alone with Kippy, struggling with her whims, while he
tried to puzzle out the oldest and most universal of conundrums,--that
of making ends meet,--the future seemed entirely blotted out by the
great blank wall of the present.

The matter was in a way complicated by the change that had come over
Miss Kippy herself. Two ideas alternately depressed and elated her. The
first was a fixed antipathy to the photograph of Miss Guinevere Gusty
which Mr. Opp had incased in a large hand-painted frame and installed
upon his dresser. At first she sat before it and cried, and later she
hid it and refused for days to tell where it was. The sight of it made
her so unhappy that Mr. Opp was obliged to keep it under lock and key.
The other idea produced a different effect. It had to do with Hinton.
Ever since his visit she had talked of little else. She pretended that
he came to see her every day, and she spread her doll dishes, and
repeated scraps of his conversation, and acted over the events of the
dinner at which he had been present. The short gingham dresses no longer
pleased her; she wanted long ones, with flowing sleeves like the blue
merino. She tied her hair up in all manner of fantastic shapes, and
stood before the glass smiling and talking to herself for hours. But
there were times when her mind paused for a moment at the normal, and
then she would ask frightened, bewildered questions, and only Mr. Opp
could soothe and reassure her.

"D.," she said one night suddenly, "how old am I?"

Mr. Opp, whose entire mental and physical powers were concentrated upon
an effort to put a new band on his old hat, was taken off his guard.
"Twenty-six," he answered absently.

A little cry brought him to her side.

"No," she whispered, shivering away from him, yet clinging to his
sleeve, "that's a lady that's grown up! Ladies don't play with dolls.
But I want to be grown up, too. D., why am I different? I want to be a
lady; show me how to be a lady!"

Mr. Opp gathered her into his arms, along with his hat, a pair of
scissors, and a spool of thread.

"Don't, Kippy!" he begged. "Now, don't cry li