glance toward a more helpless old age. There were a fair number of books, some portraits and good, time-yellowed engravings. There were four coloured servants beside the nurse for Mrs. Bolt's children. The children, Charley and Betty, were pudgy, quaint elves of three and five. Charley, the younger, had been blind from birth. That evening, Rachel Bolt came before bedtime into Hagar's room. "May I sit and talk a little while? Sylvie and mother and father and Dick Dabney, who came in a little while ago, are playing duplicate whist." "Of course you may. It's such a pleasant room you've given me." Rachel turned in her chair and regarded it from wall to wall somewhat cynically. "Well, I suppose at the first blush it may seem so. It is, however, rather shabby. We meant to do it over again this year, but times are so tremendously hard that we gave it up with a lot of other things.--What I really came in for was to ask what kind of things and places and people you'd like to see this winter. It's agreed with your grandfather that I'm to take you around." "It is good of you to be willing to do it--" "Oh, I'm to be paid for doing it! I'll be spinning my spring outfit and Betty's and Charley's while we gallivant. But I do not mean"--she laughed--"that it is going to be hard or disagreeable work, unless"--she ended coolly--"you want to go to places where I don't want to go." "To those places," said Hagar seriously, "I will go alone." "Then," said Rachel, "we will get along very well.... What do you want to do anyhow?" "I want to feel around for a while. And I'd like to be shown how to go and how to manage, just at first. But after that I hope you won't mind if I just wander about by myself." She lifted her long arms above her head in a gesture, harassed and restless. "I think there are people to whom solitude means as much as food or sleep." "Do you want me to get up and say good-night?" asked Rachel promptly. Hagar gave a warm little laugh. "Not yet awhile. I'm not that greedy and sleepy. I strive to be temperate.... What I want to see first are pictures. I have never seen any--barring those at home and at Eglantine." "Well, we can go to the Metropolitan to-morrow." "I should like that. Then I want to hear music. I have never heard any to count." "There'll be concerts and the opera later. The opera is, of course, very expensive, but I understand that your father wants you to do pretty well what you wish. If you don't mind being high up, we can do a good deal of it reasonably." "Then let us go high up." "At the moment there aren't even concerts. We might find an organ recital, and on Sundays there is music in the park." "Day after to-morrow is Sunday. I'll go and hear that. Then I want to go to the theatre." "Most of that will come later, too. Are you fond of the theatre?" "I don't know. That is why I want to go--to find out. I have never seen but three plays." "What an awfully lucky person! What were they?"