. Some day these baby
twins would be old enough to marry. It was prudent to remember such
details. A position as an old family friend might one day prove of
thrifty advantage in this miserably mercenary world where dog eats dog,
and dividends are sometimes passed. God knows and pities the sorrows of
the rich.

Geraldine, her slim hand in Colonel Mallett's, courtesied with old-time
quaintness, then her lifted eyes swept the rosy, rotund countenances
before her. To each she courtesied and spoke, offering the questioning
hand of amity.

The thing that seemed to surprise them was that she had grown since they
had seen her. Time flies when hunting safe investments. The manners she
retained, like her fashion of wearing her hair, and the cut and length
of her apparel were clearly too childish to suit the tall, slender,
prettily rounded figure--the mature oval of the face, the delicately
firm modelling of the features.

This was no child before them; here stood adorable adolescence, a hint
of the awakening in the velvet-brown eyes which were long and slightly
slanting at the corners; hints, too, in the vivid lips, in the finer
outline of the profile, in faint bluish shadows under the eyes, edging
the curved cheeks' bloom.

They had not seen her in two years or more, and she had grown up. They
had merely stepped down-town for a hasty two years' glance at the
market, and, behind their backs, the child had turned into a woman.

Hitherto they had addressed her as "Geraldine" and "child," when a rare
interview had been considered necessary. Now, two years later,
unconsciously, it was "Miss Seagrave," and considerable embarrassment
when the subject of intimate attire could no longer be avoided.

But Geraldine, unconscious of such things, broached the question with
all the directness characteristic of her.

"I am sorry I was rude in my last letter," she said gravely, turning to
Mr. Tappan. "Will you please forgive me?... I am glad you came. I do not
think you understand that I am no longer a little girl, and that things
necessary for a woman are necessary for me. I want a quarterly
allowance. I need what a young woman needs. Will you give these things
to me, Mr. Tappan?"

Mr. Tappan's dry lips cracked apart; he swallowed grimly several times,
then his long bony fingers sought the meagre ends of his black string
tie:

"In the cultiwation of the indiwidool," he began harshly, and checked
himself, when Geraldine flushed to he