gs a gold belt for her childish waist!

And then, money and money and more money. Rivers of it, ponds of it.

"If J. G. said there was copper under Fifth Avenue, they'd dig it up
to-morrow!"

"You must be real proud of him," said Mrs. Winterpine genially.

"I used to be," the girl answered, with her mouth a little awry.

"My dear, my dear!"

"Oh, yes," she cried angrily, pushing back her chair and facing
them; "all very well, but who are we? Who was my mother? Who was my
grandfather? Where did we come from? Will a sapphire bracelet answer
me that, do you think? Who knows us? 'Miss Maddy Money Bags'! How
long do you think I'd stay in that convent? Who does J. G. know?
Hotelmen and barkeeps and presidents of things! If you could see the
counts he wanted me to marry! If you could hear the couriers laugh
at him!"

"But think of all the traveling you've done, dear! What things to
remember! How happy--"

"Happy! I hate it. As J. G. says, I hate it like--well, I just hate
it," she concluded, with propriety, if a little lamely.

Something in the look she cast around the warm, clean kitchen struck
the woman suddenly. "You don't mean you'd rather live here--_here_?"
she exclaimed amazedly.

"Don't you like it?" queried Madeline sharply.

Mrs. Winterpine considered a moment. "You see, it's my home," she
began. The girl's dry laugh interrupted her.

"That's just it. It's your home," she repeated. "We haven't any.
That's the idea. What's the use of traveling if you can't come home?
And we can't, ever. Unless we go back to the Klondike," she added
satirically.

There was a long pause. It seemed that the girl was slowly
undressing herself before them: travel and money and gold bag and
scented linings slipped from her like so many petticoats and left
her thin and cold between them, warm as they were in their solid
homespun of kin and hearth. Lean and empty, a houseless, flitting,
little shadow, she had scoured the world and sat now, envious, by a
kitchen fire. How strange!

Mrs. Winterpine gathered the dishes with accustomed hands and piled
them by a pan of hot, soapy water. Caroline, sobered, rose to help
her with the instinctive courtesy of the home-trained child, but
drew back at her shaken head and waving finger, and followed her
glance toward her other guest, who stared morosely into the
dooryard, her chin in her ringed, brown hand. She was evidently not
far from tears--in a nervous crisis.

"I wonder if you'd