ark, accompanied by a shrug and a knowing look.

"Why, what do you mean, Helen?" asked Natalie with some spirit.

"Just what I say. _I_ believe Nelly Bolivar is as poor as Job's turkey
and that Peggy Stewart pays all 'her expenses here. And I know she wears
Peggy's cast-off clothes. I saw Peggy's name in one of her coats. You
know Peggy has her name and the maker's woven right into the linings.
Just you wait and see what her father looks like and then see if I'm far
wrong."

"Why, she's nothing better than a charity pupil if that's true," sneered
Lily Pearl, who never failed to follow Helen's lead.

"If Mrs. Vincent opens her school to such girls I think it would be well
for our parents to investigate the matter," was Isabel's superior
criticism.

"Yes, you'd better. Mother would be delighted to have an extra room or
two; she has so many applicants all the time," flashed Natalie, her
cheeks blazing.

"Children, children, don't grow excited. Wait until you find out what
you're fuming about," said Stella in the tone which always made them
feel like kids, Rosalie insisted. "And come on down. The horses have
been waiting twenty minutes already and Mrs. Vincent will have a word or
two to say to us if we don't watch out."

As they crossed the hall to the porte cochere, Peggy, Polly and Nelly
came from the reception room, Mr. Bolivar with them. The lively
curiosity upon the girls' faces was rather amusing. Juno favored him
with a well-cultivated Fifth Avenue stare. Helen's nose took a higher
tilt if possible. Lily Pearl giggled as usual. Stella smiled at the
girls and said: "Glad you're coming with us." Isabel murmured "Horrors!"
under her breath and waddled with what she believed to be dignity toward
the door. Marjorie only smiled, but Rosalie and Natalie stopped, the
former crying impulsively:

"Introduce your father to us, Nelly; we want to know him."

The man the girls looked upon had changed a good deal from the
despondent Jim Bolivar whom Peggy had seen sitting upon the upturned box
in Market Square so long ago. Prosperity and resultant comforts had done
a good deal for the despairing man. There were still some traces of the
handsome Jim Bolivar with whom pretty, romantic Helen Bladen had eloped,
though the intermediate years of sorrow and misfortune had changed that
dapper young beau into a careless, hopeless pessimist. What the end
might have been but for Peggy is hard to guess, but the past two years
had ma