Stud Brailsford and Timothy Halleck had been instrumental in getting Early Ann her small inheritance. Now Stud wondered whether he had been wise. Not that Early Ann had been spoiled by her riches. She was still the same rosy-cheeked, hardworking, saucy spitfire she had always been. She was still devoted to Sarah, Peter, Gus and Stud, and she announced quite passionately that she intended to live with the Brailsfords and do their work until the day she died. But now, added to all the other barriers which kept Stud from the girl, there was the fact that she was independently wealthy. Three hundred dollars was not to be sneezed at in 1913. True, automobiles and mushroom-brimmed velvet hats smothered in ostrich plumes were rather expensive, but the lisle stockings worn by all the virtuous women of the period were priced at six pairs for a dollar; high buttoned shoes usually described as classy, nobby, or natty sold for two dollars a pair; and no woman dreamed of squandering more than fifty-nine cents on a pair of drawers, a corset cover, or a princess slip. Free, white, eighteen, full of mustard and vinegar, and with three hundred dollars in the bank, the Brailsfords' hired girl was distinctly a person to be reckoned with. Her new clothes from Sears Roebuck were the talk of the party line. And now, to increase Stud's worries, Early Ann was insisting on a two weeks' trip to Chicago. It was unheard of that a girl should make such an excursion unchaperoned. It took less than six hours on the C., M. & St. P. to reach the sinful, brightly lighted metropolis on Lake Michigan; nevertheless Chicago was fifty years and a half a world from the muddy village of Brailsford Junction. Chicago might rag; make fortunes in wheat, hogs, and steel; discuss atheism, Freud, and the early H. L. Mencken. But Brailsford Junction still attended barn dances and revival meetings. It lived by the laws of Solomon and Moses only slightly conditioned by the paganism of Omar and the invasion of the Ford. These Junctionites lived by the crude practical joke, the rough and ready generosity of their pioneer grandparents, by gossip and by Jesus. They lived in a world of lamp light and lantern light, of full corn cribs and Sunday School picnics. Chicago was almost as remote as Mars. Even Stud would have made the journey to Chicago with misgivings; and for an unmarried young woman to make such a trip was unthinkable. They all pleaded with her to be sensible. "I'd never forgive myself," said Sarah. "It's up to me to keep you safe from harm. I'd worry myself sick every day you were gone." "Never heard of a girl going off to Chicago alone," said Stud. "It ain't right." "It's a big, wicked city," said Gus, knowingly. "I went to Chicago once for the Columbian Exposition. And by golly, the way little Egypt shook her ..." "Sh-h-h," said Sarah.