ay's
business, and he was no more inhuman than the next man. He was a father
of a respectable family in the neighboring suburb of Chester. His habit
was naturally to hunt for the proper formula for each situation as it
arose and to apply this formula conscientiously. According to Mr.
Gardiner, the duty of trust companies to society consisted in applying
suitable formulas to the human tangles submitted to them by their
clients. And in the present case Mrs. Gardiner suggested the necessary
formula.

"Why don't you send the girl to a good boarding-school? You say she's
fifteen and will have money."

"Yes,--some money, perhaps a good deal," her husband replied. Even in
the bosom of his family, the trust officer was guarded in statement.

"How much?" Mrs. Gardiner demanded.

"What difference does it make how much, so long as we can pay her school
bills?"

"It makes all the difference in the world!" the wife replied, with the
superior tone of wisdom. "It makes the difference whether you send her
to St. Catherine's or Herndon Hall."

It will be seen that the trust officer's wife believed in that clause of
the catechism that recommends contentment with that state of life to
which Providence hath called one, and also that education should fit one
for the state of life to which he or she was to be called by Providence.
St. Catherine's, as the trust officer very well knew, was a modest
institution for girls under the direction of the Episcopal Church, for
which he served as trustee, where needy girls were cheaply provided with
a "sensible" education, and "the household arts" were not neglected. In
other words, the girls swept their rooms, made their own beds, and
washed the dishes after the austere repasts, and the fee was
correspondingly small. Whereas Herndon Hall--well, every one who has
young daughters to launch upon the troubled sea of social life, and the
ambition to give them the most exclusive companionship and no very high
regard for learning,--at least for women,--knows all about Herndon Hall,
by that name or some other equally euphonious. The fees at Herndon Hall
were fabulous, and it was supposed to be so "careful" in its scrutiny of
applicants that only those parents with the best introductions could
possibly secure admission for their daughters. There were, of course, no
examinations or mental tests of any kind.

Mrs. Gardiner, who had the ambition to send her Alicia to Herndon Hall
in due course, if the tru