res_!" said I, aghast.

"So is Hynds House," insisted Alicia, coolly. "How much did you say
was in the bank?"

I was afraid to hear my own voice mention that insignificant sum;
for, when one considered Hynds House, the little we had was
beggarly; so I wrote it down, and pushed the paper across to her.
Instead of looking scared, Alicia Gaines looked delighted!

"All that?" And round chin on pink palm, she fell to studying me
with as much curiosity as if she had just met me and were puzzled to
get at the real Me. Then she nodded, and snatching a sheet of paper,
began to figure again, pausing every now and then to regard me with
slitted eyes. At the end of ten strenuous minutes she pushed the
paper over to me, and watched me grow all but apoplectic as I
studied it. It was an entertaining list, beginning with a hat and
ending with silk stockings. With all sorts of wonderful things in
between--for me, you understand. Things like "One brown frock, with
something cloudy-yellow about it." ("Sophy, blondes can stand yellow
wonderfully well; I suggest a bronze, instead of a duller brown.")

"Why, I have plenty of clothes!" I protested.

"Business-woman-of-a-certain-age, general-utility,
will-stand-wear-and-tear clothes. Not a stitch of Hyndshousey
clothes among them. No _happy_, glad-I'm-alive-and-a woman clothes.
Here's where you cease to look merely useful, respectable, and
responsible, and begin to look the Lady of the Castle. There's quite
as much philosophy and good morals in looking like a butterfly as
there is in resembling a caterpillar."

"_Why_ should I have more clothes?" I demanded.

"Because." And she added, with a fleeting smile, "And then catch
your hare."

"Alicia!" said I, scandalized. "Alicia Gaines, do you realize I am
thirty-six years old?"

"You wouldn't be if you just had sense enough to forget to remember
it." This resentfully.

"No? Would you mind telling me how I might become such an
accomplished forgetter?"

"Why, there's nothing easier! When you really wish to forget to
remember something, Sophy, all you have to do is to remember to
forget it!" And then, with real earnestness: "Sophy, it's the better
part of wisdom to look like the job you want to hold down. Your job
is holding down Hynds House. And we are up against things, Sophy,
you and I. We have got to win out because it means--all this." Her
eyes swept over the beautiful old room with an immense pride and
affection.

"We have jus