The pun was atrocious and, quite properly, failed to win a smile or even a reproof from the morbid young person opposite. "My grandfather," said she in meditation, "began as a clerk in a country store. Oh of course, we have discovered, since he made his money and since Mother married a Musgrave, that his ancestors came over with William the Conqueror, and that he was descended from any number of potentates. But he lived. He was a rip at first--ah, yes, I'm glad of that as well, --and he became a religious fanatic because his oldest son died very horribly of lockjaw. And he browbeat people and founded banks, and made a spectacle of himself at every Methodist conference, and everybody was afraid of him and honoured him. And I fancy I am prouder of Old Tim Ingersoll than I am of any of the emperors and things that make such a fine show in the Musgrave family tree. For I am like him. And I want to leave something in the world that wasn't there before I came. I want my life to count, I want--why, a hundred years from now I _do_ want to be something more than a name on a tombstone. I--oh, I daresay it _is_ only my ridiculous egotism," she ended, with a shrug and Stella's usual quick smile,--a smile not always free from insolence, but always satisfactory, somehow. "It's late hours," I warned her, with uplifted forefinger, "late hours and too much bridge and too many sweetmeats and too much bothering over silly New Women ideas. What is the sense of a woman's being useful," I demanded, conclusively, "when it is so much easier and so much more agreeable all around for her to be adorable?" She pouted. "Yes," she assented, "that is my career--to be adorable. It is my one accomplishment," she declared, unblushingly,--yet not without substantiating evidence. After a little, though, her gravity returned. "When I was a girl--oh, I dreamed of accomplishing all sorts of beautiful and impossible things! But, you see, there was really nothing I could do. Music, painting, writing--I tried them all, and the results were hopeless. Besides, Rob, the women who succeed in anything like that are always so queer looking. I couldn't be expected to give up my complexion for a career, you know, or to wear my hair like a golf-caddy's. At any rate, I couldn't make a success by myself. But there was one thing I could do, --I could make a success of Peter. And so," said Stella, calmly, "I did it." I said nothing. It seemed expedient. "You know, he was a little--" "Yes," I assented, hastily. Peter had gone the pace, of course, but there was no need of raking that up. That was done with, long ago. "Well, he isn't the least bit dissipated now. You know he isn't. That is the first big thing I have done." Stella checked it off with a small, spear-pointed, glinting finger-nail. "Then--oh, I have helped him in lots of ways. He is doing splendidly in consequence; and it is my part to see that the proper people are treated properly."