"I was never there except once, when father had a guest from town. Then mother sent for a carriage, and they took their friend to see the city. Hallam and I rode our burros, but we were very tired when it was over. Even then we passed through the residence streets only." "Pshaw! It's where the stores are that I like. I always wish I was made of money when I'm in a store. They do have such lovely things." "Doesn't your mother buy your clothes?" "My mother? _My mother?_ Well, I guess not. The idea! If a girl earns her own money and pays for all she has, I guess she's a right to pick 'em out. Don't you?" "Why--yes. I suppose she has a right, if her mother allows. But I should think it would be very trying to select one's own things. I should be so afraid I wouldn't choose correctly, and not please her taste." "My land! What if you didn't? It's you that has to wear them, isn't it? Have a piece of this gum. It's a new sort. Mis' Hackett keeps it and charges two cents a stick. Other kinds are only one cent, but this is prime." Gwendolyn was kind-hearted. She was also very vain. She felt that it was a fine thing to be acquainted with "aristocratics" like the Kayes; yet in her heart she was rather ashamed of Amy's plain attire, the simplicity of which seemed to Gwendolyn a proof of Mrs. Kaye's incapacity to "shop"; and its being white--though of soft warm wool--of her want of taste. She supposed, also, that any girl who could, would buy gum, and decided that her new acquaintance must be very poor indeed. "Take it. I can get plenty more. I earn real good wages now." "Do you?" asked Amy, so wistfully that the other was confirmed in her opinion of the poverty. "I should think you would like to work in the mill, wouldn't you? If your folks have lost their money, it would seem real handy to have a little coming in." "Yes, it would, indeed. But I couldn't do it." "Why not? You're strong enough, I guess, if you aren't so big." "Yes, I'm strong and well. But father has forbidden me to think of it." "Pshaw! He'd come round. If you want to do it, I _would_; and once you were settled he wouldn't care, or he couldn't help himself, anyway. He's kind of queer, isn't he? I've heard that." "Queer? Yes; just as queer as a splendid gentleman like him must always seem to common people," flashed the daughter, all the more disturbed because she realized that there had been once, if not now, just a little truth in the suggestion. "Pshaw! I didn't mean to make you mad. O' course, I hadn't ought to have spoke so about your own father. I s'pose I'd be mad, too, if anybody said things about pa. They do, sometimes, or about ma, their naming us children by fancy names, as they did. You see, they're English, pa and ma are, and so they named us after English aristocratics. Ma's a master hand for reading novels, too, and she gets notions out of them. We take the _Four Hundred Story Paper_, and the _Happy Evening Gazette_. Do you take them?"