ples. How old are you?"

"Eleven years old my next birthday."

"I should have thought her younger, David. Have her call me madam. It
sounds better."

"Very well, mother. I'll teach her the ropes when the strangeness
begins to wear off. This kind of thing is all new to her, you know."

"She looks it. Give her the blue chamber and tell Mademoiselle to
take charge of her. You say you want her to have lessons for so many
hours a day. Has she brains?"

"She's quite clever. She writes verses, she models pretty well,
Gertrude says. It's too soon to expect any special aptitude to
develop."

"Well, I'm glad to discover your philanthropic tendencies, David. I
never knew you had any before, but this seems to me a very doubtful
undertaking. You take a child like this from very plain surroundings
and give her a year or two of life among cultivated and well-to-do
people, just enough for her to acquire a taste for extravagant living
and associations. Then what becomes of her? You get tired of your
bargain. Something else comes on the docket. You marry--and then what
becomes of your protegee? She goes back to the country, a thoroughly
unsatisfied little rustic, quite unfitted to be the wife of the farmer
for whom fate intended her."

"I wish you wouldn't, mother," David said, with an uneasy glance at
Eleanor's pale face, set in the stoic lines he remembered so well from
the afternoon of his first impression of her. "She's a sensitive
little creature."

"Nonsense. It never hurts anybody to have a plain understanding of his
position in the world. I don't know what foolishness you romantic
young people may have filled her head with. It's just as well she
should hear common sense from me and I intend that she shall."

"I've explained to you, mother, that this child is my legal and moral
responsibility and will be partly at least under my care until she
becomes of age. I want her to be treated as you'd treat a child of
mine if I had one. If you don't, I can't have her visit us again. I
shall take her away with me somewhere. Bringing her home to you this
time is only an experiment."

"She'll have a much more healthful and normal experience with us than
she's had with any of the rest of your violent young set, I'll be
bound. She'll probably be useful, too. She can look out for Zaidee--I
never say that name without irritation--but it's the only name the
little beast will answer to. Do you like dogs, child?"

Eleanor started at t