But she couldn't understand it--didn't know herself. She found herself wondering who the stranger was who had worn her frock and occupied the chair of the librarian that afternoon. Grandmother Pritchard wouldn't have recognized her, nor Aunt Ellen. Had she, in assuming another name, changed her nature also? CHAPTER IX Shortly before the death of her aunt in California, Miss Julia Pritchard had made up her mind to give up her position at the city desk on her fiftieth birthday, and retire to some pleasant country town to pass the remainder of her life quietly, in friendly intercourse with her neighbors. She felt that she had more than enough to "see her through," as the phrase is, very comfortably. She had worked for over thirty years, her responsibilities and salary increasing periodically; and though she had lived and dressed well and given liberally, she had added each year to a small inheritance that had come to her through her grandfather, and had gained further by judicious investment. But when both her aunt and cousin died, and she was left guardian of the sixteen-year-old Elsie Marley, whose inheritance was small, Miss Pritchard decided to remain where she was a few years longer. It wasn't imperative, indeed, yet she felt that the last little Pritchard should have the best chance she could give her, and until she should have put her on her feet, the woman of fifty, who was strong and well and at the height of her powers, would gladly remain in harness. Her announcement to this effect was hailed with delight at the office, and another increase made in her salary so substantial that she declared she ought to adopt a whole family. Though the sacrifice was greater than any one dreamed, nevertheless she made it quietly and cheerfully, expecting no reward nor desiring any. She didn't expect much of Elsie Marley, indeed, recollecting the atmosphere of the household in which the girl had been reared, which she had herself found impossibly stifling during a short visit there fifteen years before. At that time her Cousin Augusta had been living with her husband and baby in Portland, Oregon. What with her knowledge of the Pritchards in general, however, her observation of that stereotyped family after a long interval of years, and their intense anxiety lest the one descendant of that branch become in any way a Marley rather than a Pritchard, she was able to gather a very fair idea of what Elsie's upbringing must have been. Unless she might have inherited a sense of humor from the Marley side (which was unlikely, since no one possessing a sense of humor would have married Augusta Pritchard), the girl could hardly have escaped becoming a prig at the mildest. Cold, colorless, correct, self-sufficient, Elsie Pritchard would doubtless make her mother's cousin feel keenly her fifty years, her lack of grace, and her general and utter lack of claim to the royal name she bore.