ur spending at the outset at least five hundred
dollars for clothes."

"What!" cried Hertha.

"Yes!" said Miss Patty, enjoying the annoyance on Miss Witherspoon's
face. "I don't approve of your learning dressmaking, you know, my dear,
it will lower your station. Get a lot of beautiful clothes in New York
and then let me persuade Cousin Sally to take you about with her this
winter. I'm sure she would enjoy toting a pretty southern girl around
and if she didn't have you married in six months she should never have
been born in Baltimore."

"It sounds very attractive," said Hertha, smiling. She knew Miss Patty
was only half in earnest and that she liked above all things to shock
her northern guest. "But think how terrible it would be for her if I
didn't marry and Cousin Sally was left with me and the dresses!"

"If you wanted to support yourself at the start," Miss Witherspoon said,
exactly as though no one but herself had spoken, "you could take up
operating work."

"Operating work?" asked Hertha.

"Yes, operating power-machines. Good workwomen begin at ten dollars."

"I like the sound of that," Hertha said with more animation than she had
yet shown. "I always enjoy using a machine."

Miss Patty was genuinely horrified. "Factory work!" she cried. "Factory
work for this child! You're crazy. It would ruin her social position."

Hertha was startled. It was hard for her to remember that being an
Ogilvie she had a social position.

"Take my advice," Miss Patty went on, "and if you must work, get a
genteel job. Why not go as a companion? Now I had a pretty little
relative, Dolly Simmons, not exactly a relative but we were kin, her
father's brother and my nephew's wife were cousins. The Simmonses never
had anything, or if they did they only kept it long enough to lose it in
a jack-pot, and Dolly had to support herself. She was a nice little
child, with eyes like yours, and she went into a family as companion. It
was in Chicago and the woman, she had an immense fortune, took Dolly
with her to Palm Beach. There Dolly was a raving success, so much so
that she had three proposals in one winter. The Chicago woman was quite
nasty about it, jealous of course, and sent Dolly off, but not before
she had captured a widower with five children and three houses, one in
the country, one at the beach and one in St. Louis. That was doing well
for a Simmons. How I wish," Miss Merryvale looked affectionately at
Hertha, "that I had the