n his
position could get her bearings by going the rounds of the Home
Magazines and Ladies' Companions, reading all the Aunt Jenny Corners
and columns of advice to anxious correspondents. But there are not so
many fountains of information and inspiration for a young man."

"Now, there's your mission in life, Mary," spoke up Norman. "You are
strong on giving advice and setting people straight. If you could only
get some magazine to take you on for a column of that kind, you might
accomplish a world of good. You could send marked copies to Pink, and it
might be the making of him."

Norman expected his teasing remarks to meet with an amusing outburst,
and was surprised when she pretended to take his suggestion seriously.
Her eyes shone with the interest it awakened.

"Say! I'd like that," she answered emphatically. "I really would. I'd
call it Uncle Jerry's Corner, and I'd certainly enjoy making up the
letters myself so that I could have good spicy replies for my
correspondents."

Norman, just in the act of drinking, almost choked on the laugh which
seized him. "Excuse me," he spluttered, putting the glass down hastily,
"but Mary in the role of Uncle Jerry is too funny. Why, Sis, you
couldn't be a proper Uncle Jerry without chin whiskers. The editors
wouldn't give such a column to anybody without them. A _girl_ could
never fill a position like that."

"Indeed she could," Mary protested. "I knew a girl at school who earned
her entire spending money for a year, one vacation, by writing an Aunt
Ruth's Column for the weekly paper in her home town. She was only
eighteen, and the most harum-scarum creature you ever saw. She had been
engaged four times, and once to two boys at the same time. And she used
to lay down the law in her advice column like a Puritan forefather. Just
_scored_ the girls who flirted and accepted valuable presents from men,
and who met clandestinely at friends' houses.

"Her letters were so good that several parents wrote to the paper
congratulating them on that department. And all the time she was doing
the very things which she preached against. She and Charlotte Tatwell
were chums, and in all sorts of scrapes together. Charlotte's father
used to mourn over her wild ways and try to keep her from running so
much with Milly. He thought that Milly had such a bad influence over
her. He hadn't the faintest idea that she wrote the Aunt Ruth advice,
and twice, when it seemed particularly well aimed at Cha