"When I got to be eighteen I thought I was old enough to branch out and do something for myself--I've always tried to hold up my own end. My little school went first-rate. There was only one drawback--another school next door, full of great, rowdy boys. They would climb the fence and make faces at my scholars; yes, and sometimes they would throw stones. But that wasn't the worst: the other school taught book-keeping. Now, I never was one of the kind to lag behind, and I used to lie awake nights wondering how I could catch up with the rival institution. Well, I hustled around, and finally I got hold of two or three children who were old enough for accounts, and I set them to work on single entry. I don't know whether they learned anything, but _I_ did--enough to keep Granger's books for the first year after we started out." Jane smiled broadly; it was useless to set a stoic face against such confidences as these. "We were married at the most fashionable church in town--right there in Court-house Square; and ma gave us a reception, or something like it, in her little front room. We weren't so very stylish ourselves, but we had some awfully stylish neighbors--all those Terrace Row people, just around the corner. 'We'll get there, too, some time,' I said to Granger. 'This is going to be a big town, and we have a good show to be big people in it. Don't let's start in life like beggars going to the back door for cold victuals; let's march right up the front steps and ring the bell _like_ somebody.' So, as I say, we were married at the best church in town; we thought it safe enough to discount the future." "Good for you!" said Jane, who was finding her true self in the thick of these intimate revelations; "you guessed right." "Well, we worked along fairly for a year or two, and finally I said to Granger: 'Now, what's the use of inventing things and taking them to those companies and making everybody rich but yourself? You pick out some one road, and get on the inside of that, and stick there, and--The fact is," she broke off suddenly, "you can't judge at all of this room in the daytime. You must see it lighted and filled with people. You ought to have been here at the _bal poudré_ I gave last season--lots of pretty girls in laces and brocades, and powder on their hair. It was a lovely sight." "It must have been. I believe Rosy would have looked real pretty fixed up that way." "Rosy?" "Our youngest; she's eighteen." "Is she out?" "Not quite; but I expect she's on the way." "Is she pretty?" "Yes," replied the just Jane. "Yes, Rosy is quite pretty. She's dark. She would look lovely in yellow tulle--with a red rose somewhere." "Is she clever?" "H'm," said Jane, thoughtfully, "I suppose so. She's beginning to understand how to get what she wants, anyway." "And just the least bit selfish and inconsiderate?" insinuated Mrs. Bates, shrewdly. "Y--yes, I'm afraid so."