The two hundred dollars shrank in impressiveness from being known of after and not before Medway Ashendyne's letter. But to the eyes of her grandmother and her Aunt Serena the two hundred dollars was the impressive, the only really impressive, thing. Her grandmother advised that it be put in bank. Miss Serena said that, when she was Hagar's age, she had had a watch and chain for more than two years. "What would you like to do with it, Gipsy?" asked Captain Bob. The colour came into Hagar's cheeks. "With one half I want to get my two winter dresses and my coat and hat, and with the other half I want to get books." "Books!" exclaimed the Ashendynes--the Colonel was not present. "Why, aren't there books enough here?" "They are not the kind of books I need." "Nonsense!" said Old Miss. "Get your winter clothes if you wish,--though I am sure that Medway means now to send the Colonel money for you,--but save the rest. It will come in useful some day. Some day, child, you'll be thinking about your marriage clothes." "Luna and I came over the hill just now with Ralph Coltsworth," remarked Captain Bob cheerfully, apropos of nothing. "He says he's studying hard--means to catch up at the University and be a credit to the family." Miss Serena was talented in taking offence at small things. She had evolved the watch-and-chain idea and she thought it should have received more consideration. In addition she had the kind of memory that always holds the wrong things. "Books! I suppose you mean a kind of books that we certainly don't have many of here!--French novels and Darwin and the kind of books those two Northern women were reading this summer! Even when you were a child--don't you remember, mother?--you had a perfect talent for getting your hands on debasing literature! I supposed you had outgrown it. I'm sure Mrs. LeGrand never encouraged it. A hundred dollars worth of books!--and I suppose you are to choose them! Well, if I were father, I'd look over the list first." "Aunt Serena," said Hagar, with a Spanish gravity and courtesy, "there are times when I understand the most violent crimes.... Yes; I know you don't know what I mean." That was in August. September passed and part of October, and then, late in that month, Hagar went to New York.