“But blue gingham morning dress and rose-colored evening dress are scarcely sufficient unto one’s needs,” murmured Kate.

Ann turned away her head.  “I can’t take things—­not things like that.”

“But why not?” pursued Kate.  “Why can’t you take as well as I can take?”

She turned upon her hotly, as if resentful of being toyed with.  “How silly!  It is yours.”

Katie had said it at random, but once expressed it interested her.  “Why I don’t know whether it is or not,” she said, suddenly more interested in the idea itself than in its effect upon Ann.  “Why is it?  I didn’t earn it.”

“There’s no use talking that way.  It’s yours because you’ve got it.”  That not seeming to bring ethical satisfaction she added:  “It’s yours because your family earned it.”

Katie was unfastening the muslin gown.  “But as a matter of fact,”—­getting more and more interested—­“they didn’t.  They didn’t earn it.  They just got it.  What they earned they had to use to live on.  This that is left over is just something my grandfather fell upon through luck.  Then why should it be mine now—­any more than yours?”

Ann deemed her intelligence insulted.  “That’s ridiculous.”

“Well now I don’t know whether it is or not.”  She was silent for a moment, considering it.  “But anyhow,” she came back to the issue, “we have our hands on this money, so we’ll get the suit.  You’re in the army now, Ann.  You’re enlisted under me, and I’ll have no insubordination.  You know—­into the jaws of death!—­Even so into the jaws of Elizabeth Barrett Browning—­and a tailor-made suit!”

So Katie laughed herself out of the room.

And softly she whistled herself back into the library.  The whistling did not seem to break through the smoke which surrounded Wayne.  After several moments of ostentatious indifference, she threw out at him, with a conspicuous yawn:  “Well, Wayne, what did you think of the terrifying jeune fille?”

Wayne’s reply was long in coming, simple, quiet, and queer:  “She’s a lady.”

Startled, peculiarly gratified, impishly delighted, she yet replied lightly:  “A lady, is she?  Um.  Once at school one of the girls said she had a ‘trade-last’ for me, and after I had searched the closets of memory and dragged out that some one had said she had pretty eyes, dressed it up until this some one had called her ravishingly beautiful—­after all that conscientious dishonesty what does she tell me but that some one had said I was so ‘clean-looking.’  One rather takes ‘clean-looking’ for granted!  Even so with our friends being ladies.  Quaint old word for you to resurrect, Wayne.”

“Yes,” he laughed, “quite quaint.  But she seems to me just that old-fashioned thing our forefathers called a lady.  Now we have good fellows, and thoroughbreds, and belongers.  Not many of this girl’s type.”

Katie wanted to chuckle.  But suddenly the unborn chuckle dissolved into a sea of awe.