“A great deal more solid than it was,” he replied. “It is part of a through line. I suppose Miss Eschelle found a better investment.” “One nearer home,” she admitted, in the most matter-of-fact way. “Henderson must have given the girl points,” thought Hollowell. He began to feel at home with her. If he had said the truth, it would have been that she was more his kind than Mrs. Henderson, but that he respected the latter more. “I think we might go in partnership, Miss Eschelle, to mutual advantage--but not in building. Your ideas are too large for me there.” “I should be a very unreliable partner, Mr. Hollowell; but I could enlarge your ideas, if I had time.” Hollowell laughed, and said he hadn't a doubt of that. Margaret inquired for Mrs. Hollowell and the children, and she and Carmen appointed an hour for calling at the Ocean House. The talk went to other topics, and after a half-hour ended in mutual good-feeling. “What a delightful old party!” said Carmen, after he had gone. “I've a mind to adopt him.” In a week Hollowell and Carmen were the best of friends. She called him “Uncle Jerry,” and buzzed about him, to his great delight. “The beauty of it is,” he said, “you never can tell where she will light.” Everybody knows what Newport is in August, and we need not dwell on it. To Margaret, with its languidly moving pleasures, its well-bred scenery, the luxury that lulled the senses into oblivion of the vulgar struggle and anxiety which ordinarily attend life, it was little less than paradise. To float along with Carmen, going deeper and deeper into the shifting gayety which made the days fly without thought and with no care for tomorrow, began to seem an admirable way of passing life. What could one do fitter, after all, for a world hopelessly full of suffering and poverty and discontent, than to set an example of cheerfulness and enjoyment, and to contribute, as occasion offered, to the less fortunate? Would it help matters to be personally anxious and miserable? To put a large bill in the plate on Sunday, to open her purse wide for the objects of charity and relief daily presented, was indeed a privilege and a pleasure, and a satisfaction to the conscience which occasionally tripped her in her rapid pace. “I don't believe you have a bit of conscience,” said Margaret to Carmen one Sunday, as they walked home from morning service, when Margaret had responded “extravagantly,” as Carmen said, to an appeal for the mission among the city pagans. “I never said I had, dear. It must be the most troublesome thing you can carry around with you. Of course I am interested in the heathen, but charity--that is where I agree with Uncle Jerry--begins at home, and I don't happen to know a greater heathen than I am.” “If you were as bad as you make yourself out, I wouldn't walk with you another step.”