"A barracks!" said Leslie. "Oh, I know all about boarding-houses and their keepers, from the black-bugled lady with ancestors down to the loud-voiced, false-fronted person who makes her husband eat in the kitchen, and I tell you a boarding-house is quite out of the question for you." "That's just what Mr. Thrall said," eagerly interrupted Sybil, "when the matter was mentioned in his presence. And he knows a woman, whom he has employed for years as a wardrobe woman and sort of general dresser, to help those ladies who have no maids of their own. She is a widow, and she owns--mortgaged, of course--one of those old-fashioned, two-and-a-half-story, red-brick basemented houses----" "Take a breath, Syb!" laughed Dorothy. "That's a gem," gravely asserted Galt, "that descriptive sentence is. Spoken rapidly it does leave the impression that the widow is mortgaged and a doubt as to the red brick reaching beyond the basement. But when one writes it all out, and punctuates carefully----" "Leslie Galt, my young brother! Will you remember that you are still on probation? Final vows have not yet been administered. Though under instruction, you have not yet been admitted into the Lawton community for life!" "That's about the only thing I do remember at all clearly these days," answered Galt, smiling meaningly at Dorothy. But John Lawton rumpled his thin hair, and said, anxiously: "Let's get back to that mortgaged house, daughter--it's most train time for you, dear." "Well," went on Sybil, drawing her father's hand about her neck as she spoke, "her name is--is, oh, something with an S, Mrs.--Stow--Stover-- Stine--Sty--Stivers! that's it! Mrs. Jane Stivers--odd, isn't it, papa? And she----" "My dear child," remonstrated Mrs. Lawton, somewhat wearily, "why will you not adopt my method of remembering names? It's so embarrassing at times to have a cognomen escape you, just when you feel it, too, on the tip of your tongue, but can't get it off. Now, I always associate a name with a thing or an action or an idea, and the result is I never have to go skipping through the alphabet as you and Dorothy do. I recall the case of Mrs.--Mrs.--dear me! Mrs.--you know, girls, to whom I refer--that woman I disliked so. I like most people, but she was underbred--at One Hundredth Street? You must remember her perfectly. I know at the time I associated her name with something--er--er, something she hated. Now, what did that woman hate? Her husband was bandy--polite enough, but bandy, and he had a cross eye! Something she hated--now what?" "Perhaps she hated anything very straight," laughed Dorothy. "I think I should under the circumstances!" "There!" broke in Mrs. Lawton. "What did I tell you? Straight--she hated anything straight, because her name was Crook! And Mr. Crook was cross-eyed! It's infallible, my system! But do get on, Sybil, or really you will lose that train!"