she managed her own affairs, social
and financial, for herself. If the world had been asked to choose a
modern prototype for the young, independent American girl of the
leisure class, it is reasonably safe to assume it would have named
Marjorie Schuyler.

As for young Burgeman, the world knew him as the Rich Man's Son. That
was the best and worst it could say of him.

"I think, Toto," said Marjorie Schuyler to her toy ruby spaniel, "it
will be June. There is only one thing you can do with October--a
church wedding, chrysanthemums, and oak leaves. But June offers so
many possible variations. Besides, that gives us both one last,
untrammeled season in town. Yes, June it is; and we'll not have to
think about these yet awhile." Whereupon she dropped the shimmering
samples into the waste-basket.

A maid pushed aside the hangings that curtained her den from the
great Schuyler library. "There's a young person giving the name of
O'Connell, asking to see you. Shall I say you are out?"

"O'Connell?" Marjorie Schuyler raised a pair of interrogatory
eyebrows. "Why--it can't be. The entire company went back weeks ago.
What is she like--small and brown, with very pink cheeks and very
blue eyes?"

The maid nodded ambiguously.

"Bring her up. I know it can't be, but--"

But it was. The next moment Marjorie Schuyler was taking a firm grip
of Patsy's shoulders while she looked down with mock disapproval at
the girl who reached barely to her shoulder.

"Patsy O'Connell! Why didn't you go home with the others--and what
have you done to your cheeks?"

Patsy attacked them with two merciless fists. "Sure, they're after
needing a pinch of north-of-Ireland wind, that's all. How's
yourself?"

Marjorie Schuyler pushed her gently into a great chair, while she
herself took a carved baronial seat opposite. The nearness of
anything so exquisitely perfect as Marjorie Schuyler, and the
comparison it was bound to suggest, would have been a conscious
ordeal for almost any other girl. But Patsy was oblivious of the
comparison--oblivious of the fact that she looked like a wood-thrush
neighboring with a bird of paradise. Her brown Norfolk suit was a
shabby affair--positively clamoring for a successor; the boyish brown
beaver--lacking feather or flower--was pulled down rakishly over her
mass of brown curls, and the vagabond gloves gave a consistent finish
to the picture. And yet there was that about Patsy which defied
comparison even with Mar