cestors must have been
wealthy people, she has such a taste for luxury."

"That doesn't follow. I'm sure you've seen plenty of poor folks go
without the necessaries of life in order to get the luxuries."

"She is shiftless enough. To-day I took her into a store to buy her some
stockings, and she refused to have any but the very best quality. 'The
second best are what I get for myself, Mary,' said I; 'they wear much
longer than the others.' 'I don't care,' she said. 'If I can't have the
best, I don't want any.' 'Then do without,' said I, and we left the
place. The fun of it is that she won't even darn her old ones! I can't
always be so firm with her. I'm amazed at myself sometimes, the things
she gets out of me. What do you suppose she wants now?"

I gave a warning cough to signify that my mother had come into the
nursery, but Belle gazed straight ahead into the wood fire, and seesawed
in the rattan rocker--a tuneful symphony in a mauve tea-gown.

"A cornet, if you please."

"A cornet!" said I. "Whatever put that into her head?"

"I can't tell. She says the music professor at the convent can teach her
to play it, and she thinks if she learned she might be able to lead the
singing in a church with one."

"Perhaps somebody played the cornet in that concert company she was
with."

"Na, na. It's nearer hame than that," mother struck in. "She has a
notion o' ane o' thae cratur's 'at pl'y at the Opera Hoose. I hae seen
her gang by the window wi' him, an' spiered at Watty wha he was."

"I don't like Wat's telling tales of Mary."

"He dinna, Davvit, till I pit it tae him. He canna bear the tawpie, and
doesna like to hae her p'inted oot as his sister. A body canna blame the
laddie. It's a heap better than his fa'in' in luv wi' her."

"Perhaps it is," groaned Isabel.

When mother had gone to bed my wife said:

"Mrs. Wade has been here to-day to ask Watty and Mary to a young
people's dance on Friday night."

"What did you say?"

"I told her I wasn't going to dress that girl up and send her out to
parties to be snubbed and slighted by the other girls, as she was at the
dancing school ball. She said that if I let Mary go she'd see that she
had a good time. For her part, she admired the way I'd stuck up for the
girl in spite of everything; and if she was good enough to live with us
as a daughter, it would surely not contaminate anybody else to meet her
out of an evening."

Saturday night I inquired of Belle how Mar