ome and see her. In fact
they were counting on Katie's coming. She was to come and stay a long
time with them and really get acquainted with the West. "I'll tell you
what Helen's like," he summed it up. "She's very much what you would have
been if you'd lived out there and had the advantages she has."

Katie stared. No, he was not trying to be funny.

They started toward the house. "Katie," he broke out, "if you have
any cousinly love in your heart, and know anything about Walt Whitman,
tell me something, so I can go back and spring it on Helen. She's mad
over him."

"He was one of the 'advantages' I didn't have," said Katie. "He didn't
play a heavy part in the thing I had that passed for an education."

"Isn't it the limit the way they 'do you' at those girls' schools?"
agreed Fred sympathetically. "Helen says that in religion and education
the more you pay the less you get."

"I should like her," laughed Katie.

But what would her Aunt Elizabeth think of a "sturdy little wretch,"
believing in the economic independence of woman--whatever that might
be--with lots of horse sense, and good on her job!

Katie was on the outside now, and for good. If nothing else, the fun was
out there. And there was something else. That light on Fred's face when
he was trying to tell about Helen.

Captain Prescott had come down the steps to meet them. "I was just coming
for you. Don't you think, Katie, it would be fun to look in on the dance
up here at the club house?"

On the alert for shielding Ann, Katie demurred. It was late, and Ann was
tired from her golf.

There was an eager little flutter, and Ann had stepped forward. "Oh, I'm
not at all tired, Katie," she said.

"Does she _look_ tired?" scoffed Wayne. "She's only tired of being made
to play the invalid. Hurry along, Katie. If you girls aren't
sufficiently befrocked, frock up at once."

Katie hesitated, annoyed. She felt shorn of the function of her office.
And she was dubious. The party was one which the younger set over the
river were giving--at the golf club-house on the Island--for the returned
college boys. She did not know who might be there--she was always meeting
friends of her friends. She felt a trifle injured in thinking that just
for the sake of Ann she had avoided the social life those people offered
her, and now--

Ann was speaking again, her voice stripped of the happy eagerness. "Just
as you say, Katie. It is late, and perhaps I am--too tired."

Th