They drove back to Beach City, and found that Bertie had come home. Bertie was Bunny’s sister, two years his senior, and she had been visiting the terribly fashionable Woodbridge Rileys, up north. Bunny tried to tell her about the fishing-job, and how things were going at Lobos River, but she was most cruelly cutting—described him as a “little oil gnome,” and said that his finger-nails were a “dead give-away.” It appeared that Bertie had become ashamed of oil; and this was something new, for of old she had been a good pal, interested in the business, and arguing with Bunny and bossing him as any older sister should. Bunny didn’t know what to make of it, but gradually he came to understand that this was a part of the fashionable education Bertie was getting at Miss Castle’s school. Aunt Emma was to blame for this. She had granted Jim’s right to confine Bunny’s training to the making of money, but Bertie at least should be a young lady—meaning that she should learn how to spend the money which Dad and Bunny were going to make. So Aunt Emma got the name of the most expensive school for young female money-spenders, and from that time on the family saw little of Bertie; after school she went to visit her new rich friends. She couldn’t bring them to her home, there being no real butler—Rudolph was a “farm-hand,” she declared. She had picked up some wonderful new slang; if she didn’t like what you said, she would tell you that you were “full of prunes”—this was away back in history, you understand. She would give a pirouette and show off her fancy lingerie, with violet-colored ribbons in it; she would laugh gleefully: “Aren’t I a speedy young thing?”—and other phrases which caused grandmother to stare and Dad to grin. She would be pained by her father’s grammar: “Oh, Dad, _don’t_ say ‘jist’!” And Dad would grin again, and reply: “I been a-sayin’ it jist fifty-nine years.” But all the same, he began a-sayin’ it less frequently; which is how civilization progresses. Bertie condescended to drive out to the field, and see the new derricks that were going up. They went for a walk, and whom should they meet but Mrs. Groarty, getting out of her elderly Ford car in front of her home. Bunny was naively glad to see her, and insisted upon introducing Bertie, who displayed her iciest manner, and, as they went on, scolded Bunny because of his horrid vulgar taste; he might pick up acquaintance with every sort of riff-raff if he chose, but certainly he need not make his sister shake hands with them! Bunny could not understand—he never did succeed in understanding, all his life long, how people could fail to be interested in other people.