"Yes; why not?" "Why, girls from the tenement districts!--it doesn't seem right to encourage them in this way." "Oughtn't any young thing to be encouraged to follow its natural bent? It's a case of individuals, not of sections of the city." "I've always been sorry," explained Miss South, "for the bright girls who drop out of school at fourteen that their ablebodied parents may snatch the little wages they can earn in the factories. The ten or twelve girls we may have here at the Mansion are very few compared with the hundreds who need the same kind of chance. But I am hoping that through these a broader influence may be exerted." Although many critics naturally thought that Miss South did wrong in giving girls of a certain class ideas above their sphere, on the whole she was commended for undertaking a good work. There were some also who pitied Mrs. Barlow on account of Julia's partnership in the scheme. "This is what comes of letting a girl go to college," and they wondered that Mrs. Barlow herself did not express more disapproval. "You'll have only orphans," said Mr. Elton, a cousin of Mrs. Barlow's, who took much interest in the work; "for in my experience fathers and mothers of the working class are just lying in wait for the earnings of their half-grown daughters. To fill your school you will either have to kill off a few fathers and mothers, or else consider only orphans to be suitable candidates. To be sure, you might offer heavy bribes to parents. But of course you can get the orphans easily, if they have cruel aunts or stepmothers." "As to cruel aunts," responded Julia, "judging from my own experience, as was said of Mrs. Harris, 'I don't believe there's no sich a person;' and in spite of Ovid and Cinderella, I have my doubts about cruel stepmothers." "We'll see," said Mr. Elton. "At any rate, you'll have to bribe your girls, and when I meet them my first question will be, How much do they pay you to stay?" One of the most delightful features in fitting up the house for its new use had been the eagerness to help shown by many of Miss South's former pupils. Ruth, for example, in furnishing the kitchen, had said, "This will show that I have a practical interest in housekeeping, even though I am to spend my first year of married life in idle travel." "With your disposition it won't be wholly idle," Miss South had responded. "Well, I do mean to discover at least one or two new receipts, or better than that, some new articles of food, that I can put at the service of the Mansion upon my return." "We certainly shall have you in mind whenever we look at these pretty and practical things." III BRENDA AT THE MANSION One fine afternoon, not so very long after she had wasted her twenty dollars and made a friend of Maggie McSorley, Brenda in riding costume opened the front door. As she stood on the top step, somewhat impatiently she snapped her short crop as she gazed anxiously up Beacon Street.