the wonderful structures of feathers and lace and
ribbon, which the voluble saleswoman assured them were cheap at thirty
dollars, and was lost in a rapturous delight, as, with the calmness of
experienced shoppers, her cousins went from one department to another in
White's and Hovey's, laying in a supply of airy nothings of which she
did not even know the use; always being treated by them with the same
delicate consideration: there was nothing forced upon her, only, as they
were getting things, she might as well be fitted too. Then to Huyler's
for ices and macaroons, then up past St Paul's and the Common, and then
home to a lunch of chicken salad and strawberries and frothed chocolate,
in the cool dining-room, with its massive leather-covered chairs and
potted plants and roses.

She was growing used now to the new order of things and smiled a welcome
to Belle from the velvet lounging chair in which she, Pauline Harding,
who had never lounged in her life, was beginning to feel perfectly at
home.

'What an inveterate bookworm you are, Paul,' and Belle looked at the
pile of volumes Pauline had brought from the library to study in the
long morning hours which the force of a lifelong habit gave her, before
the rest of the family were astir.

'You forget I am an ignoramus,' she answered quietly. 'I must do
something to catch up.'

Belle shrugged her shoulders.

'What's the use? It is surprising with what an infinitesimal fraction of
knowledge one can get through this old world.'

'Such a speech from a woman in this age is rank heresy!'

'Oh, of course, if you are going in for equal suffrage and anti-opium,
and the rest, but I never aspired to the garment of either Lucy Stone or
Frances Willard. I _do_ pine to be an anatomist, and Professor Herschel
says I have a decided talent for it too. However, papa is not
progressive, at least he does not want his daughters to be, although I
tell him I might be a professor in Harvard some day, so there is nothing
left for me but to fall into the ranks of the majority and do nothing.'

'Why so? Is there nothing in the world but suffrage, and opium
and--anatomy?'

'Oh, dear, yes, there's philanthropy, but Gwen does that for the family.
She is on every Society under the sun. Let me count them, if I can.
There's the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and the
Society for the Improvement of the Moral Condition of Working Women, and
the Society for the Betterment of the