seeing, and that by the middle of the winter, when once more in her New
York apartment, her present experiences and observations would have
the right perspective, and their salient features would stand out more
plainly. So she won the hearts of her hostess, and of the dozen or more
children of the house, with small gifts, and overjoyed with this she set
about making the whole community happier. Little presents, smiles, and
kind words meant so much to the overworked, hopeless women, and her
cheery manner was so pleasant to men and children, that all worshipped
her--clumsily and mutely, but whole-heartedly. She was a fairy lady to
them.

The truth was that, in her eagerness to secure the most vivid kind of
local color, she had gone a step too far. Clarence, with its decayed
sidewalks and rotting buildings, was not typical of middle Iowa any more
than a stagnant pool lift by a receded river after a flood is typical
of the river itself. Before the days of railroads Clarence had been
a lively little town, but it was on the top of a hill, and, when the
engineer of the Jefferson Western Railroad had laid his ruler on the map
and had drawn a straight line across Iowa to represent the course of the
road, Clarence had been left ten or twelve miles to one side, and, as
the town was not important enough to justify spoiling the beauty of the
straight line by putting a curve in it, a station was marked on the
road at the point nearest Clarence, and called Kilo. For a while the new
station was merely a sidetrack on the level prairie, a convenience for
the men of Clarence, but before Clarence knew how it had happened Kilo
was a flourishing town, and the older town on the hill had begun to
decay. Even while Clarence was still sneering at Kilo as a sidetrack
village, Kilo had begun to sneer at Clarence as a played-out crossroads
settlement. Clarence, when Mrs. Tarbro-Smith visited it, was no more
typical of middle Iowa than a sunfish really resembles the sun.

In Clarence Mrs. Smith's best loved and best loving admirer was Susan,
daughter of her hostess, and, to Mrs. Smith, Susan was the long sought
and impossible--a good maid. From the first Susan had attached herself
to Mrs. Smith, and, for love and two dollars a week, she learned all
that a lady's maid should know. When Mrs. Smith asked her if she would
like to go to New York, Susan jumped up and down and clapped her hands.
Susan was as sweet and lovable as she was useful, and under M