“This, I believe,” said her hostess, nodding at the climbing white rose that looked in at the window. “But it’s partly that I like things that wash and that don’t fade.” “Well, I simply love your house. I’d no _idea_ it would be like this.” “Why, what did you think it would be like?” “Oh—a—kind of—no, I shan’t say. You’d misunderstand.” Hildegarde felt it prudent not to insist. If you did, with this young person, you were exposed to the most mortifying results. “Who are these?” Bella demanded, inspecting the pictures. “My brothers. That’s Trenn and this is Harry.” “Will they be at tea?” “No, they’re on a ranch in Tulare County.” “Why, _we’ve_ got a ranch in Tulare County.” She was still looking round as if expecting to find something that as yet escaped her eye. “Where’s—where—a—Show me your—your ribbons and things.” “I haven’t got any. We can’t afford ribbons in this family.” “Let me see your collars and ties, then.” Hildegarde opened her top drawer. In the course of turning over collars and handkerchiefs and little boxes the silver locket came to light. “Why don’t you wear it any more?” “Oh, I don’t know.” Bella leaned her head with its halo of short, brown curls against her friend, and very softly she beguiled her: “Please, Miss Mar, show me that friend of your father’s again.” Hildegarde hesitated a moment and then she opened the locket. Jack Galbraith’s face smiled out upon the big girl and the little girl. “Did you say you hadn’t ever seen him?” “No, he hasn’t been here for sixteen years. Not since he was a little boy. And he might have been here always, because he was an orphan and his father was my father’s greatest friend. But some relations of his that nobody had ever heard of before, they discovered him when he was nine, and made him come to New York and live with them. But he didn’t like it. At least—_I_ don’t know—mother thinks _they_ didn’t like it.” “Why does she think that?” “Because they let him go away to school. And he spent his vacations canoeing, climbing mountains, and doing all sorts of queer things rather than live with his relations. Then he went to Harvard, and then he went abroad and studied. He’s always studying.” “Gracious! what makes him do that?” “Oh, he wants to find out about everything. And he’s doing it. He’s written a book with things in it nobody ever heard of before. Father says it’s a work of genius. Mr. Galbraith was coming here two years ago, when he’d finished the book, only just then—” “I didn’t think,” Bella interrupted with a sigh, “I didn’t think from his picture he was so awful old.” “He isn’t. He’s barely twenty-five.” But Bella shook her head. “If a person’s over twenty he might just as well be a hundred.”