"Nonsense! A girl can't have too much finery," was the rejoinder. "Even if you don't get to wear all your pretties, it makes you feel sort of easy, sort of good-as-anybody like, just to know you've got 'em in the closet." With her own hands she ran ribbons and rearranged trimmings and packed, to the secret jealousy of Ellen, keeping up a constant stream of shrewd comment and advice, some of which Joan found worth remembering. "The trouble with you is, girlie, you think too much," was one of the pearls that fell from her lips. "Just let go and have a good time, and don't take yourself so hard. You can feel as different as you like inside, just so folks don't know it. Folks are sort of leery of what they aren't used to. See?" Joan often wondered in what school of experience her step-mother had gleaned her curious wisdom. Ellen Neal was the only one of the three elders who watched her going with any uneasiness. "Look here, Joan," she said once, abruptly. "When I spoke like I done about marriage being the best thing for a girl, I meant marriage with love, child--marriage _with love_. Like your mamma's." The simile was unfortunate. The eye that Joan believed to be her brain twinkled mockingly. "Do you mean to insinuate that marriage and love are not always synonymous? Why, Mrs. Neal, you put so many strange ideas into my young head lately! Seriously," she added, seeing that the other's anxious gravity did not relax, "I don't believe it would be hard to pump up a little love in return for--lots of it, say, and a place of your own in the world, and independence." "Where there's love there ain't apt to be much independence, I've noticed," remarked the other. "All the more reason to do without love, then!" cried Joan, with triumphant logic. But she hugged Ellen remorsefully, glad that the good woman could only guess at what was going on at the moment in her nursling's brain. Her step-mother's casual advice and her own inner musings had resulted in one firm determination. If she missed romance, experience, all the real things of life, it would not be for lack of meeting them halfway. She would be no longer a passive agent. She would be bold and reckless--even if necessary a little Fast; though how to go about being Fast was somewhat of a puzzle to Mary's daughter. "If people want to say things, or squeeze my hand, or anything like that," she told herself rather vaguely, "I must remember not to hold back and be standoffish.... How do I know what I like unless I try?" But while the noun on her tongue was plural and indefinite, the noun on her mind was single and masculine and very definite indeed. It behooved Mr. Desmond to look to himself. CHAPTER XIII