Mrs. Bassett was immensely anxious to please her aunt in all ways; but that intrepid woman’s pleasure was not a thing to be counted on with certainty.  She not only sought to please her aunt by every means possible, but she wished her children to intrench themselves strongly in their great aunt’s favor.  The reports of such of Mrs. Owen’s public benefactions as occasionally reached the newspapers were always alarming.  No one ever knew just how much money Sally Owen gave away; but some of her gifts in recent years had been too large to pass unnoticed by the press.  Only a few months before she had established a working-girls’ home in memory of a daughter—­her only child—­who had died in early youth, and this crash from a clear sky had aroused in Mrs. Bassett the gravest apprehensions.  It was just so much money said to be eighty thousand dollars—­out of the pockets of Marian and Blackford; and, besides, Mrs. Bassett held views on this type of benevolence.  Homes for working-girls might be well enough, but the danger of spoiling them by too much indulgence was not inconsiderable; Mrs. Bassett’s altruism was directed to the moral and intellectual uplift of the mass (she never said masses) and was not concerned with the plain prose of housing, feeding, and clothing young women who earned their own living.  Mrs. Owen, in turning over this home to a board of trustees, had stipulated that music for dancing should be provided every Saturday evening; whereupon two trustees, on whom the Christian religion weighed heavily, resigned; but Mrs. Owen did not care particularly.  Trustees were only necessary to satisfy the law and to assure the legal continuity of Elizabeth House, which Mrs. Owen directed very well herself.

Mrs. Bassett encouraged Marian’s attentions to Mrs. Owen’s young visitor; but it must be said that Marian, on her own account, liked Sylvia and found delight in initiating her into the mysteries of Waupegan life.  She taught her to ride, to paddle a canoe, and to swim.  There were dances at the casino, and it was remarkable how easily Sylvia learned to dance.  Marian taught her a few steps on the first rainy day at the Bassett house, and thereafter no one would have doubted that Sylvia had been to dancing-school with the boys and girls she met at the casino parties.  Marian was the most popular girl in the summer colony and Sylvia admired her ungrudgingly.  In all outdoor sports Marian excelled.  She dived from a spring-board like a boy, she paddled a canoe tirelessly and with inimitable grace, and it was a joy to see her at the tennis court, where her nimbleness of foot and the certainty of her stroke made her easily first in all competitions.  At the casino, after a hard round of tennis, and while waiting for cakes and lemonade to be served, she would hammer ragtime on the piano or sing the latest lyrical offerings of Broadway.  Quiet, elderly gentlemen from Cincinnati, Louisville, and Indianapolis, who went to the casino to read the newspapers or to play bridge, grinned