Molly Wheeler—her father was an Oregon Senator—Lucille Smith—hers was on the supreme bench—and Mary Withrow, the daughter of the minister of Washington’s most exclusive church—of course, an Episcopalian church—were all dressed expensively in glistening white, as was almost every woman here on this very hot day, and each wore a pretty and costly hat. The fourth girl was hatless and her simpler gown was a soft but vivid green. “You look as if you’d grown here, Ivy,” Mary Withrow exclaimed not unreasonably. For the English girl’s gown was just the color of the young live-oak leaves that so interlaced above them where they sat, great lush ferns growing thickly against the trees’ silver trunks, that a sort of brilliant green twilight seemed all about them, although it was scarcely a quarter past four yet. “I wish I had,” the girl in green replied. “At least, I wish I lived here.” “Don’t you like Washington?” Lucille demanded sharply. The jurist’s daughter was stanchly _and sharply_ loyal to Washington—grateful to it, too, perhaps, for the Smiths had come to it _via_ several less pleasant localities. “I hate teaching kiddies,” Ivy said with an impatient shrug. “But your own cousins are such dear little things,” Mary remonstrated gently. “I suppose they are,” Ivy Gilbert conceded, “dear little things, and they certainly are my cousins—but a long way off. It isn’t the children I object to—it’s having to teach them. I like Blanche fairly well, and I’m fond of Dick—sometimes—and I daresay I’d be quite fond of them, if I didn’t see them often, and never _had_ to.” “You don’t like teaching?” Mary said, incredulously. “Oh, I’d love to, more than anything else, if only I knew enough! And you don’t like to teach? Truly?” “I loathe it. You don’t know whether you’d like it or not—until you’ve tried it. You’d know then. But you don’t have to ‘know enough’ or to know much of anything. Education’s a very minor asset—at least for a nursery governess, and I suspect for any other sort of teacher. There’s only one thing you need: patience, patience, patience—and then patience! Eternal patience! Cow-like, door-mat patience. Oh, I loathe the whole show! Emma’s kind enough. Charley’s a dear. But I loathe it all. I feel stuck in a ditch! And I want to move and to _be_. I want to _taste_ life, and make some of it. But there, let’s talk about something else!” The young, passionate voice broke off impatiently, and the girl clutched a great fern from its root and began fanning herself with it slowly. And the scarlet peppers she wore dangling at her breast, a splendid splash of Oriental color on the exquisite jade of her linen gown, shook passionately as she moved.