go every time--with me."

Kate withdrew her gaze from the village below and looked into her
sister's pretty face with smiling, indulgent eyes.

"Well?" she said.

The other shook her fair head. Her eyes were still laughing, but their
expression did not hide the seriousness which lay behind them.

"It's not 'well' at all," she cried. She drew herself up from the
ground into a kneeling position, which left her sitting on the heels
of shoes that could never have been bought in Rocky Springs. "Now,
listen to me," she went on, holding up a warning finger. "I'm just
going to state my case right here and now, and--and you've got to
listen to me. Five years ago, Kate Seton, aged twenty-three, and her
sister, Helen Seton, were left orphans, with the sum of two thousand
dollars equally divided between them. You get that?"

Her sister nodded amusedly. "Well," the girl went on deliberately.
"Kate Seton was no ordinary sort of girl. Oh, no. She was most
_un_ordinary, as Nick would say. She was a sort of headstrong girl
with an absurd notion of woman's independence. I--I don't mean she was
masculine, or any horror like that. But she believed that when it came
to doing the things she wanted to do she could do them just as well,
and deliberately, as any man. That she could think as well as any man.
In fact, she didn't believe in the superiority of the male sex over
hers. The only superiority she did acknowledge was that a man could
ask a woman to marry, while the privilege of asking a man was denied
to Kate's sex. But even in acknowledging this she reserved to herself
an alternative. She believed that every woman had the right to make a
man ask her."

The patient Kate mildly protested. "You're making me out a perfectly
awful creature," she said, without the least umbrage. "Hadn't I better
stand up for the--arraignment?"

But her sister's mock seriousness remained quite undisturbed.

"There's no necessity," she said, airily. "Besides, you'll be tired
when I'm through. Now listen. Kate Seton is a very kind and lovable
creature--really. Only--only she suffers from--notions."

The dark-eyed Kate, with her handsome face so full of decision and
character, eyed her sister with the indulgence of a mother.

"You do talk, child," was all she said.

Helen nodded. "I like talking. It makes me feel clever."

"Ye--es. People are like that," returned the other ironically. "Go
on."

Helen folded her hands in her lap, and for a moment