Here Sherry laughed as she recalled her own and Katy’s ideas of Aunt Pledger’s house and style before her visit there the previous year. Born in Buford and the daughter of a clergyman, she knew little of the world except what she had seen at boarding-school, where, with Katy, she had spent a year. Of fashionable society she knew nothing, except as it was partially represented by the Saltus family, who owned a large house just outside the village, where they spent their summers. Between the Saltuses and Shermans a strong friendship had sprung up, and Sherry was right in her surmise that it was to Rose Saltus she owed her invitation to visit her aunt. With Kate she had talked a great deal of her New York relative,—had wondered why they were never asked to visit her and why she never visited them, or paid them any attention except to send herself and Kate and their mother each a handkerchief and their father a book at Christmas. For the rest of the year she ignored them entirely. “Another handkerchief? Yes, and here’s the mark she forgot to take off: twenty cents! I have six of them now, all the same size, quality and price,—half cotton,” was Sherry’s contemptuous comment when the last batch of handkerchiefs arrived with the twenty-cent mark upon them. Sherry was the outspoken one of the family, to whom the most latitude was allowed by her rather stern father while he was living. He had wanted a boy, whom he was to call Sheridan, after his favorite general. But she proved to be a girl, and was christened Fanny Sheridan, and grew up a bright, lighthearted, impulsive girl, fond of excitement and adventure, making friends wherever she went and feeling herself everybody’s equal. To see New York had been the dream of her life, and when Mrs. Pledger’s invitation came she was delighted, for now she should see life as it ebbed and flowed in a great city. She had heard that her Uncle Pledger was a millionaire, and had expected a grandeur which would quite overshadow her own home. Of just what she thought of the reality she never said much until the morning when she received Alex.’s advertisement, and Katy suggested that Aunt Pledger would feel hurt to have her grand-niece a waitress. Mr. and Mrs. Pledger had been very kind to her, and gone far out of their way to entertain her. They had never been to an opera in their lives until they took her there; and when the questions of seats came up they hired an expensive box, Mr. Pledger saying he’d do the whole thing or nothing, and he guessed he could afford to have a spree now and then. He had his spree and slept through half of it, but was glad Sherry enjoyed it, and was proud that Craig Saltus came into the box to call, and hoped those high bucks, the Marshes, saw him. If he was not in the smart set he knew everybody who was, and from having lived in New York so long both himself and wife were as good as encyclopedias with regard to the history of many of the