Jennie mused, but she did no more. Life was too big a mystery to grapple with. If she tried it, it made her unhappy. It made her unhappy that Max should have been friendly at first, and then growled at her so resentfully. She wondered if dogs had a scent for moral and emotional atmospheres. She couldn’t express this last in words, but she did it very well by thought. She often had thoughts for which she had no words, so that her inner life was broader than that which she showed outside. It was one of the things she had noticed about Mrs. Collingham—that she had words for everything. It was like her possession of the house, the gardens, the beautiful things. They gave her spaciousness. Her spirit moved with a larger swing. She could think, feel, express herself strongly, vividly, commandingly, while they, the Folletts, had to creep and sneak timidly along the back lanes of life. "That’s why I’m doing it," she reasoned with herself, "because I’m in the back lanes of life. I can creep and sneak along, and I can’t do anything else. It was all very well for him to jostle me with his lean, iron flank and to growl; but he didn’t know what twenty-five thousand would mean to me." Along the line of these musings, Teddy said, suddenly: "Saw young Coll to-day. Came up and spoke to me. Not half a bad sort when you get to know him." Jennie felt a little faint, but no one noticed it, because Gussie threw back the ball. "Tell him to come up and speak to me. Any afternoon at half past five, when I leave Corinne’s." "Say, Gus," Gladys giggled; "wouldn’t you like a guy with all that wad waitin’ for you every day when Corinne shuts down the lid? My! The ice-cream sodas he could blow you to!" Lizzie was pained. It seemed to her that the process of Americanization which her children were undergoing lay chiefly in the degradation of their speech. "Gladys darling, can’t you find proper words to—" "Oh, momma dear," Gladys complained, "do put a can on all that. If you’re a cash girl, you’ve got to talk English, or the other girls’ll whizzy you round the lot." "Young Coll is going to South America," Teddy informed the party. "Sails with Huntley on Monday. Gosh! Wouldn’t I like to be going, too! Say, dad, why do some fellows come into the world with the way all smoothed for them and their bread buttered in advance?" "Because," Gussie declared, loftily, "they’re clever and can get ahead, like Fred Inglis. I’ll bet that if _his_ father wanted his taxes and the interest on a mortgage, he wouldn’t have to raise the wind among his old friends. Fred’d be Johnny-on-the-spot with the greenbacks." Teddy could only gulp, hang his head over his plate, and choke himself with hash, as he muttered to his soul; "God! I’ll shoot that Fred Inglis if I ever get a gun." And just as if she knew that Teddy needed comforting, Pansy sprang upon his knees, pushing her face up along his breast till she could lick his chin. ————