sent for her and afterwards had refused to
live with him or accept a cent of his money because he would not do what
she wished, or because for some reason or other she disapproved of him.

"After Aunt Patricia inherited the money she has spent as little as
possible for her own needs, but instead gives away large sums in
eccentric fashions which appeal to her. Nevertheless I confess I am not
happy over the prospect of her going to France to be with us, although
Tante seems immensely relieved to have her companionship and our
families will be glad to know she will not have to bear so much
responsibility alone. It is a good deal of a task to look after seven or
eight girls."

Vera frowned somewhat ruefully.

"But I thought we were going to France to care for other people not to
be looked after ourselves. However, if Miss Lord's behavior this
afternoon is a fair criterion I shall certainly become as a little
child. For the entire time we were together I don't think I dared do
anything except what she commanded. But isn't it wonderful that our
entire Camp Fire unit is to go to France for the reclamation work? I
thought when Mrs. Burton offered me the opportunity last summer that I
should go alone."

Within the past months Vera Lagerloff had also changed, but the
transformation was unlike Bettina Graham's.

After Billy Webster's death in California Vera had made astonishingly
little open protest. But for that reason the effect upon her character
had been the deeper.

Since her earliest childhood there had been but little in her life for
which she cared intensely, save her friendship with the odd dreaming
boy, whose ambitions for his own future had absorbed so much of her time
and thought. Until Billy died Vera really had never considered her own
future apart from his.

In many ways she was superior to the members of her own family, which in
itself makes for a certain spiritual loneliness. Yet her parents were
Russians, and Russia is at present offering more contradictions in human
nature than any other race of people in the world. However, if her
parents were peasants and had but little education, they had possessed
sufficient courage to emigrate to the United States at a time when the
Czar and autocracy ruled in their own land. Afterwards Vera's father had
become a small farmer on Mr. Webster's large place, and here Vera and
Billy had grown up together.

But at least Vera's family made no effort to interfere with h