"I am a reporter for the _Clarion_," young Charlie Horn announced, striving not to appear too proud. "And I've come to interview you." "Interview me?" she cried in dismay. "What about?" "Well, you see," said he, with his benign smile, "you're the first woman lawyer that's ever been in Westville. It's almost a bigger sensation than your fath--you see, it's a big story." He drew from his pocket a bunch of copy paper. "I want you to tell me about how you are going to handle the case. And about what you think a woman lawyer's prospects are in Westville. And about what you think will be woman's status in future society. And you might tell me," concluded young Charlie Horn, "who your favourite author is, and what you think of golf. That last will interest our readers, for our country club is very popular." It had been the experience of Nellie Horn's brother that the good people of Westville were quite willing--nay, even had a subdued eagerness--to discourse about themselves, and whom they had visited over Sunday, and who was "Sundaying" with them, and what beauties had impressed them most at Niagara Falls; and so that confident young ambassador from the _Clarion_ was somewhat dazed when, a moment later, he found himself standing alone on the West doorstep with a dim sense of having been politely and decisively wished good afternoon. But behind him amid the stiff, dark, solemn-visaged furniture (Calvinists, every chair of them!) he left a person far more dazed than himself. Charlie Horn's call had brought sharply home to Katherine a question that, in the press of affairs, she hardly had as yet considered--how was Westville going to take to a woman lawyer being in its midst? She realized, with a chill of apprehension, how profoundly this question concerned her next few months. Dear, bustling, respectable Westville, she well knew, clung to its own idea of woman's sphere as to a thing divinely ordered, and to seek to leave which was scarcely less than rebellion against high God. In patriarchal days, when heaven's justice had been prompter, such a disobedient one would suddenly have found herself rebuked into a bit of saline statuary. Katherine vividly recalled, when she had announced her intention to study law, what a raising of hands there was, what a loud regretting that she had not a mother. But since she had not settled in Westville, and since she had not been actively practising in New York, the town had become partially reconciled. But this step of hers was new, without a precedent. How would Westville take it? Her brain burned with this and other matters all afternoon, all evening, and till the dawn began to edge in and crowd the shadows from her room. But when she met her father at the breakfast table her face was fresh and smiling. "Well, how is my client this morning?" she asked gaily. "Do you realize, daddy, that you are my first really, truly client?" "And I suppose you'll be charging me something outrageous as a fee!"