r tells me that you are through school, and neither you nor he
speak of any desire on your part to go to college. I suppose, however,
like most young girls, you will wish to take up some study or
occupation to fit yourself to become self-supporting or to be useful to
the world in some definite manner. I heartily sympathize with such an
aim, having worked since my eighteenth year myself, and shall be
cordially interested in helping you either to plan or to carry out a
future for yourself."

Here Elsie broke off. Cousin Julia was certainly absurd! She had
always been regarded, indeed, by the California Pritchards as a
singular, eccentric person, rather wanting in refinement and careless
of social amenities--one from whom they were quite content to be
separated by the "breadth of our great American continent." She had
taken after her mother, who came from Nebraska--or some such place--and
the family had considered it a pity that she should have been and
remained Pritchard by name, particularly since Elsie herself, Pritchard
of Pritchards, had to go by the name Marley.

Still the girl's smooth brow did not contract. In any event, she said
to herself, after Cousin Julia had seen her, it wasn't likely that she
would suggest that she go out and earn her living. And as for her
future, which the letter mentioned--why, her future was of course far
ahead. Elsie had rather taken it for granted that she should marry
when the proper time came, as girls did in books, as her grandmother
and mother had done, and as Aunt Ellen would have done had she not been
so frail. Once it had even occurred to her that it would be rather
appropriate if she should marry some one named Pritchard, though she
realized that to be only a remote possibility. In any event, she
didn't know why going to New York should necessarily make any essential
difference in her future, and she was thankful that she hadn't to
consider it for some years yet. Meantime, the boarding-house
confronted her.

Very likely, however, she could endure even that. She knew it would be
comfortable, so far as that went, and she needn't mingle with the other
people. She could have a piano and continue her lessons, and she might
study vocal music. She could buy books and attend concerts and perhaps
even the theatre and opera. She could go alone in a carriage to
matinee performances, and quite likely there would be some reduced
gentlewoman living at the boarding-house who