ngs for all of us--our witch with a wand! I've a notion
to write to her and I ask her if she can't help me get a position of
some kind. Didn't she endow a library in the little village where she
was born? Seems to me I remember hearing something about it a long time
ago. Maybe I could get a position in it."

Jack shook his head decidedly. "No, Mary, I don't like your idea at all.
She did endow a library, and she's interested in so many things of the
kind that she could doubtless pull strings in all directions. But mother
wouldn't like to have you ask any favors of her, I'm sure. I wouldn't do
it myself, and I shouldn't think you'd want to, after all she's done for
us."

"But I'd not be asking her for money or _things_," declared Mary. "I'd
only ask her to use her influence, and I don't see why she wouldn't be
as willing to do it for her own 'blood and kin' as she would for working
girls and Rest Cottage people and fresh-air babies. I'm going to try it
anyhow. I'll take all the blame myself. I'll tell her that mamma
doesn't know I'm writing, and that you told me not to."

"But she's been out of touch with us for so long," persisted Jack,
frowning. "She promised once, that if Joyce reached a certain point in
her work she'd give her a term or two in Paris, and Joyce reached it a
year ago. Cousin Kate knows it, for she was at the studio and saw for
herself what Joyce was doing, but she was so interested in two blind
children that she had taken under her wing, that she couldn't talk of
anything else. She had gone down to New York to consult some specialist
about them, and she was considering adopting them. She told Joyce that
she wouldn't hesitate, only she had made such inroads on her capital to
keep up her social settlement work, that there was danger of her ending
her own days in some kind of an asylum or old ladies' home. She nearly
lost her own sight several years ago. That is why she takes such an
especial interest in those two children."

Mary considered his news in silence a moment, then remarked stubbornly,
"She might like to have me come on and help take care of the blind
children. At any rate it will cost only a postage stamp to find out,
and I can afford that much of an investment. I'll write now, before
mamma gets back."

Knowing that the composition of such a letter would be a long and
painstaking affair, Mary did not risk beginning it on her precious
monogram stationery. She brought out some scraps of pap