Selina had been married almost three years when there came to her a letter from Julie Hempel, now married. The letter had been sent to the Klaas Pool farm and Jozina had brought it to her. Though she had not seen it since her days at Miss Fister’s school, Selina recognized with a little hastening heart-beat the spidery handwriting with the shading and curleycues. Seated on her kitchen steps in her calico dress she read it. DARLING SELINA:— I thought it was so queer that you didn’t answer my letter and now I know you must have thought it queer that I did not answer yours. I found your letter to me, written long ago, when I was going over Mother’s things last week. It was the letter you must have written when I was in Kansas City. Mother had never given it to me. I am not reproaching her. You see, I had written you from Kansas City, but had sent my letter to Mamma to mail because I never could remember that funny address of yours in the country. Mamma died three weeks ago. Last week I was going over her things—a trying task, you may imagine—and there were your two letters addressed to me. She had never destroyed them. Poor Mamma . . . Well, dear Selina, I suppose you don’t even know that I am married. I married Michael Arnold of Kansas City. The Arnolds were in the packing business there, you know. Michael has gone into business with Pa here in Chicago and I suppose you have heard of Pa’s success. Just all of a sudden he began to make a great deal of money after he left the butcher business and went into the yards—the stockyards, you know. Poor Mamma was so happy these last few years, and had everything that was beautiful. I have two children. Eugene and Pauline. I am getting to be quite a society person. You would laugh to see me. I am on the Ladies’ Entertainment Committee of the World’s Fair. We are supposed to entertain all the visiting big bugs—that is the lady bugs. There! How is that for a joke? I suppose you know about the Infanta Eulalie. Of Spain, you know. And what she did about the Potter Palmer ball. . . . Selina, holding the letter in her work-stained hand, looked up and across the fields and away to where the prairie met the sky and closed in on her; her world. The Infanta Eulalie of Spain. . . . She went back to the letter. Well, she came to Chicago for the Fair and Mrs. Potter Palmer was to give a huge reception and ball for her. Mrs. P. is head of the whole committee, you know, and I must say she looks queenly with her white hair so beautifully dressed and her diamond dog-collar and her black velvet and all. Well, at the very last minute the Infanta refused to attend the ball because she had just heard that Mrs. P. was an innkeeper’s wife. Imagine! The Palmer House, of course. Selina, holding the letter in her hand, imagined.