Old Ellen wisely kept her busy with her preparations for boarding-school, her father having announced his intention of complying scrupulously with his dead wife's wishes, no matter at what cost to himself. Joan thought this very generous of him, although the cost was figurative rather than literal, as Mrs. Darcy's little property was willed to her child, with himself as guardian. Sometimes she had been a little ashamed of herself for the willingness with which she prepared to leave him, the eagerness with which she longed for the merry companionships and irresponsibilities of school again. But perhaps it was natural enough, considering that throughout that dreary summer her sole companions had been her grief-stricken father, the servant Ellen, and the sympathetic maiden cousins, who would have felt it indelicate to so much as smile in the presence of such deep mourning. Toward the end of the summer she made one other acquaintance, thanks to the above-mentioned lingerie. One of the sudden summer wind-storms which occur sometimes in the Ohio Valley landed in their yard one Monday morning a garment that had strayed unmistakably from the clothes line across the alley; a trifle of palest silk and lace and blue ribbons which Ellen Neal eyed with dark suspicion, but which Joan privately determined to copy for herself so soon as finances permitted. Monday being the day when Ellen's temper was at its most difficult, Joan decided to abate her dignity to the point of returning the article herself; and so she made her way, looking very young and touching in her homemade black frock, to the front entrance of the house across the alley. And there by good luck she met, just alighting in her porte-cochère from a most imposing limousine, a person who was indubitably the owner of the strayed garment; a plump, blonde, dimpled lady who suggested pink _crêpe de Chine_ and blue satin bows all over her. She greeted Joan with an effulgence that seemed out of all proportion to its cause, until in the course of conversation it transpired that she, like the Darcys, was a newcomer in Louisville, and rather lonely. Her name was Mrs. Calloway, and she came, as she vaguely explained, from "across the river." "It isn't as easy to get acquainted here as I thought it would be," she admitted naïvely, "Still," she added with her dimpling smile, "I expect folks will be friendly enough, once they get to know me, don't you think?" "Of course they will!" murmured Joan quite sincerely; for despite the woman's patent vulgarity, there was something attractive about her. One felt above all things that she was kind; and just then kindness meant a good deal to the lonely girl.