"It's not a question of money."

"Nothing ever is—with Mamma and Alma," Nancy thought, but she was silent, and continued to lick the chocolate off her spoon composedly.

"I have thought the whole thing over very carefully, and I am quite sure that the matter of money must not be weighed against the value which it would have for you girls."

"It's not a trip to Europe, is it, Mamma?" asked Alma, quite as if she expected that this might be the case. Indeed, a trip to Europe would have been no more incredible to Nancy than her mother's plan, which Mrs. Prescott proceeded to unfold.

"You see, my dears, living as we do, you girls are absolutely cut off from the opportunities which are so essential to every girl's success in life. This has been a great worry to me. You are growing older, and you are forming no acquaintances that will be of value to you. For this reason I have decided that the expense of sending you both—for a last year, you understand—to a good school, a smart school, a school where Alma can meet girls who will count for something in social life—is an expense that must be met."

"But—heavens, we've had all the ordinary schooling we need," exclaimed Nancy in amazement. "If—if I could just have a few months' tutoring so that I could take my college exams in the spring—I could work my way through college easily——"

"I don't want you to go to college, Nancy," said Mrs. Prescott irritably. "What in the world is the use of a whole lot of ologies and isms—and ruining your looks over a lot of senseless analyzing and dissecting and everything——"

"I won't be studying anything useless, Mother dearest. But don't you see that it will be ever so much easier for me to get a position as a teacher if I can show a Bachelor's degree instead of just a smattering of French, or a thimbleful of ancient history?"

"There's no reason why you should think of becoming a teacher," answered Mrs. Prescott. "And I wish you wouldn't talk about it—it's so dreadfully drab and gloomy."

"But I want to make my living in some way."

"If you and Alma marry well, there won't be any reason why you should make your living."

"But, Mother, we can't count on chance, like that. Suppose Alma and I never met a rich man whom we could love—we'd be helpless."

"A year at Miss Leland's will give both of you plenty of opportunities. You'll meet girls there whom you ought to know, girls who will invite you to their houses, through whom you'll meet eligible young men——"

"The expense of paying for board and tuition at Miss Leland's would be the least of the digging we'd have to do into the family purse. We'd be under obligations to people, which we would never be in a position to repay—we'd be no better than plain, ordinary sponges. I—I couldn't bear it. Besides, the fees at Miss Leland's are terribly high. I could go to college for almost two years on what I'd pay for one year at Miss Leland's—and all that we'd get at that school would be a little French, a smattering of history, dancing and fudge parties."

"And extremely desirable acquaintances."

"But, Mother, we'd never be able to keep up with them on their own scale of living," pleaded Nancy, with a hopeless conviction in her heart that she was talking to the winds. "Girls like Elise Porterbridge and Jane Whiteright have an allowance of a hundred a month, and anything else they want, when they've spent it."

"You've got money on the brain, Nancy," said Alma, shaking her curls off her face. "You are a regular old miser."

"Well, you're right, perhaps. I—I hate to, heaven knows, but we do have to think about it, Alma. It's the poor gamblers who are always counting on a lucky chance that are ruined. I want to be prepared for the worst—and then if something nice turns up, why, wouldn't that be ten times better than if, when we had been counting on the best, the worst should happen?"

"You see, dears," Mrs. Prescott had entirely missed the point of Nancy's last remark, "Uncle Thomas is very old, and I am sure—I am quite sure that he will relent."

"Oh, Mother!" Poor Nancy flung up both hands in despair.

"I have entered you both at Miss Leland's, so, really, there is no use in arguing about it any more. And I've already sent the check for the first term. Everything is decided. I didn't tell you until to-night, just because I was afraid that this hard-headed old Nancy of mine would try to argue me out of it; when I know that it's the best and wisest thing to do. Nancy, darling, please don't scowl like that. You aren't angry with Mother, are you?" A soft little hand was laid on Nancy's muscular brown one, and in spite of herself the girl relented, with a whimsical smile and a sigh.

"I'd like to see anyone who could be angry with you for two minutes," she said, burrowing her brown head in the lace on her mother's shoulder.

"That nasty old Uncle Thomas has been angry with me for ten years, very nearly. Isn't he a dreadful old man?" laughed Mrs. Prescott, tweaking Nancy's ear.

"We'll have to get a lot of new clothes if we are going to boarding school." Alma, having spread the towel on the floor, reclined full length in front of the fire, and meditated with satisfaction on the delightful prospect.

"Mamma, if I could just once have a hat with a feather on it—a genuine plume, I'd be happy for the rest of my days."

"Wouldn't Alma be lovely?" cried Mrs. Prescott delightedly. "Oh, you don't know how I long to give my daughters everything—everything. One thing you must have, Alma, is a black velvet dress—made very simply, of course. They are so serviceable," she flung this sop to Nancy, who, with her head thrown back, was good-humoredly tracing phantom figures in the air with her forefinger.

"In for a penny, in for a pound," she observed, agreeably. "Oh, darling Uncle Thomas, kindly lend us a million. We need it, oh, we need it—every hour we need it!"

"Let's set one day aside for shopping," was Alma's bright suggestion; she felt that this would be her element. "We'll go into the city in the morning, get everything done by noon, lunch at Mailliard's and then go to a matinée. I haven't seen a play since Papa took us to see Humpty Dumpty, when Nance and I were little things."

"I've got eighty-three cents," said Nancy. "I'd like to see the color of your money, ma'am, before we do any gallivanting."

"Well,—I'm not going to sit here gazing at that cake another minute,—please give me a slice, Nancy, sugar-pie, lambkin,—just a wee little scrooch of it," begged Alma, snuffing the handsome chocolate masterpiece of Nancy's culinary skill. Nancy took off a crumb and gave it to her, which elicited a wail of indignation from Alma.

"Well, here you are. And it'll give you a nice tummy-ache, too," predicted Nancy, cutting off a generous slice. "Good heavens—there's the door-bell, Mother!" She stopped, knife in hand and listened, petrified. "Who on earth can be coming here at this time of night, and all of us in our dressing-gowns. Alma, you're the most nearly dressed of all of us. Here, pin up your hair. There it goes again. Fly!"

Alma seized a handful of hairpins, and thrusting them into her hair as she went, ran out of the room.

Nancy and her mother listened with eyebrows raised.

"Must be a letter or something," Nancy surmised. "You don't suppose—it couldn't be——"

Alma forestalled her conjectures, whatever they might have been, by entering the room with her face shining and an opened letter in her hand.

"It's an invitation, Nancy," she beamed. "Isn't that exciting? Elise Porterbridge wants us to come to a 'little dance she's giving next Friday night.' And the chauffeur is waiting for an answer."

"Funny she was in such a hurry," remarked Nancy. "I suppose someone fell out, and she's trying to get her list made up. What do you think, Mother?"

"Why, it's delightful. I want you to know Elise better anyway. You