marks, and a little kindly gossip about townspeople. This was her
usual Saturday night entertainment. Carry and Andrew went to town to
participate in the unfailing diversion of a large percentage of the
population. This was tramping up and down the main street in a stream
till the business places closed, from which exercise they apparently
derived an enjoyment not visible to my naked eye. Uncle Jake and Miss
Flipp not being in evidence, Dawn and I were the only two unoccupied,
and noticing that she was prettily dressed, I resorted to a point of
common interest in promoting friendliness between members of our sex
and invited her to look at a kimono I had bought for a dressing-gown.

This had the desired effect. A look of pleasure passed over the face
that charmed me so, and she arose willingly.

"I'm glad it is my week to stay in and make the bedtime coffee," she
said as we examined the gorgeous kimono, a garment of dark-flowered
silk; and Dawn, having all the fetichly and long-engendered feminine
love of self-decoration, was delighted with it.

"Put it on," I suggested, and the girl complied with alacrity. She did
not make a very natural Jap, being more on the robust than _petite_
scale, but she was a very beautiful girl. With my impassioned love of
beauty I could not help exclaiming about hers, and the foolish
platitude, "You ought to be on the stage," inadvertently escaped me,
seeing this is the highest market for beauty in these days when even
personal emotions can be made to have commercial value.

"Do you think so too?" she said eagerly, betraying what lay near her
heart. "Do you know anything about the stage? You don't think all
actresses bad women like grandma does, do you?"

"Scarcely! Some of the most sweet and lovable women I've ever seen are
earning their living on the boards. I'm intimately acquainted with
several actresses, and will show you their photographs some day."

"Oh, I'd love to be on the stage!" exclaimed the girl.

"Tell me why and how you first came to have such a wish."

"Well, it's this way," said Dawn, pulling my kimono close about her
beautifully rounded throat and curling her pink feet on a wallaby-skin
at the bedside as she sat down upon them. "I heard grandma telling you
something about me this afternoon, and I suppose you think I'm a
terrible girl."

"A beautiful one," I said, revelling in the curling lips and rounded
cheek and chin.

"Don't make fun of me," said Dawn huffily,