"Many thanks, Cousin Julia," she murmured rather absently, a far-away look in her dark eyes. After a little she rose and began to wander about the room. "Cousin Julia," she said presently, "I can't help wondering--honestly, don't you ever wish I looked more--I mean that I looked any like them? They're mighty aristocratic-looking guys after all." "My dear, when you talk like that you know as well as I that you're fishing," insisted Miss Pritchard. "I have told you that I'm too well-satisfied. I have to watch out for flaws." "Well, don't you ever think, anyhow, that such _whopping_ dimples are--almost vulgar?" "I adore them," responded Miss Pritchard calmly. "But anyhow, you know, they are supposed to be Pritchard. Didn't you tell that what's-his-name boy you got them from your mother?" Elsie colored. "I loathed that gump," she said. Miss Pritchard did not press the matter, though she wished very much Elsie had explained or made other amends. CHAPTER XX "Oh, Cousin Julia, how perfectly gorgeous!" cried Elsie, "but oh, I don't need it, and--oh, please take it back. You just shower things on me, and I feel so wicked to have you spend so much on me." "Elsie, child, don't you understand yet how happy I am to have you to spend it on?" returned Miss Pritchard. It was quite true that the latter was constantly bestowing not only small, but rich and costly gifts upon the girl who had come to live with her and for whom she had come to live. In this instance it was an opera-cloak of rose-colored broadcloth, wadded, and lined with white brocaded satin, soft and light and warm. The two went often to the theatre, and it would be useful, though Miss Pritchard herself had never owned such a garment, and it was certainly rather elegant for a girl of sixteen. "Now, Elsie," Miss Pritchard went on, "I want to ask you something--I have more money than I know what to do with. Whom should I spend it on if not on you?" Elsie winced. Her little face grew wistful. "Then it's because I'm a Pritchard you do it?" she demanded. Miss Pritchard laughed. "My dear, how you pin one to cold facts. If you must know, then, it's because you aren't a Pritchard. It's because you're yourself, through and through, and haven't a trace nor a look of the Pritchards that I love you so and long to have you happy here with me, who am not a Pritchard either. No doubt your family rubbed that fact in sufficiently, so you didn't expect me to be. To tell the truth, I could never abide the Pritchards. I was such a misfit when I visited Aunt Ellen's years ago, that I rather dreaded your coming, though I did feel that being so young you might not be inveterate, and that we might manage to hit it off, as they say." Immensely cheered, Elsie kissed her warmly. Miss Pritchard threw the cloak over her shoulders, produced a rosy silk scarf to tie over her bobbed hair, and they were off.