"I consent to be a hundred--on those terms," I told her. * * * * * * She talked to me a good bit, in small daily doses, of the more general changes in the world, showed me new maps, even let me read a little in the current magazines. "I suppose you have a million of these now," I said. "There were thousands when I left!" "No," she answered. "There are fewer, I believe; but much better." I turned over the one in my hand. It was pleasantly light and thin, it opened easily, the paper and presswork were of the best, the price was twenty-five cents. "Is this a cheap one--at a higher price? or have the best ones come down?" "It's a cheap one," she told me, "if you mean by that a popular one, and it's cheap enough. They have all of a million subscribers." "And what's the difference, beyond the paper and print?" I asked. "The pictures are good." I looked it through again. "Yes, very good, much improved. But I don't see anything phenomenal--unless it is the absence of advertisements." Nellie took it out of my hand and ran it over. "Just read some of that," she said. "Read this story--and this article--and that." So I sat reading in the sunny silence, the gulls wheeling and dipping just as they used to, and the wide purple ocean just as changeable--and changeless--as ever. One of the articles was on an extension of municipal service, and involved so much comment on preceding steps that I found it most enlightening. The other was a recent suggestion in educational psychology, and this too carried a retrospect of recent progress which gave me food for thought. The story was a clever one. I found it really amusing, and only on a second reading did I find what it was that gave the queer flavor to it. It was a story about women--two women who were in business partnership, with their adventures, singly and together. I looked through it carefully. They were not even girls, they were not handsome, they were not in process of being married--in fact, it was not once mentioned whether they were married or not, ever had been or ever wanted to be. Yet I had found it amusing! I laid the magazine on my rug-bound knees and meditated. A queer sick feeling came over me--mental, not physical. I looked through the magazine again. It was not what I should have called "a woman's magazine," yet the editor was a woman, most of the contributors were women, and in all the subject matter I began to detect allusions and references of tremendous import. Presently Nellie came to see how I was getting on. I saw her approaching, a firm, brisk figure, well and becomingly dressed, with a tailored trimness and convenience, far indeed from the slim, graceful, yielding girl I had once been so proud to protect and teach. "How soon do we get in, Lady Manager?" I asked her. "Day after to-morrow," she answered back promptly--not a word about going to see, or asking anyone!