ssociate anything
unpleasant with Miss Maitland. She was tall, well over the middle
height, and her hair was of that uncompromising blackness that made one
think of things Amazonian--or would have done so had not her deep
violet eyes softened the effect in a peculiarly attractive manner. It
was no wonder that poor Pelgram fluttered about so compelling a flame,
and Isabel, as she looked at her friend, thought for the thousandth
time that if she were a man--well, it was a little hard to say what she
would do in that remote contingency, but she felt certain, at all
events, that she would adore Helen.

As a matter of fact no young lady in all Boston seemed less likely to
become a man in the next or any subsequent incarnation. There are
Bostonian persons of the female kind who could with readiness be
conceived as turning into men without any sea-change or especially
startling biological transmutation. But Isabel was not one of them.
Small and dainty, she was of the gold-and-white, essentially feminine
type. She lived alone with her parents in the solid old-fashioned
house on the north side of the Common, almost under the shadow of the
State House dome. It made very little difference to Isabel where she
lived, and since her father would never consider moving to any other
locality nor rebuilding the rather patriarchal homestead which he had
occupied for twenty-five years, it was just as well that the daughter
was so complaisant. She, moreover, was the only person who looked upon
John M. Hurd with a clear understanding of his habits of thought. She
could herself accomplish things with him, when her way did not conflict
too directly with his own, but she gained her points first by
concentrating her attack on the matters really of import to her, and
second by taking her way whenever she saw an avenue open, notifying her
somewhat surprised parent afterward that she had done so.

"Father once told me a story," Isabel had said, "of a man who went to a
railroad president about a culvert he wanted to build under the
railroad track, and the president told him that he should have built
his culvert first and asked permission afterwards. And I invariably
say now, if father protests against any of my performances, that he
never should have told me that story. And he usually gives a kind of
growl which I have always interpreted to mean that all is well."

Isabel had a little money of her own, but she never used the income.
Inst