when Marian turned things upside down.  If any one else had improvised a bowling-alley of ginger-ale bottles and croquet-balls on the veranda, they would have complained of it bitterly.  She was impatient of restraint, and it was apparent that few restraints were imposed upon her.  Her sophistication in certain directions was to Sylvia well-nigh incomprehensible.  In matters of personal adornment, for example, the younger girl’s accomplishments were astonishing.  She taught Sylvia how to arrange her hair in the latest fashion promulgated by “Vogue”; she instructed her in the refined art of manicuring according to the method of the best shop in Indianapolis; and it was amazing how wonderfully Marian could improve a hat by the slightest readjustments of ribbon and feather.  She tested the world’s resources like a spoiled princess with an indulgent chancellor to pay her bills.  She gave a party and ordered the refreshments from Chicago, though her mother protested that the domestic apparatus for making ice-cream was wholly adequate for the occasion.  When she wanted new tennis shoes she telegraphed for them; and she kept in her room a small library of mail-order catalogues to facilitate her extravagances.

Marian talked a great deal about boys, and confided to Sylvia her sentimental attachment for one of the lads they saw from day to day, and with whom they played tennis at the casino court.  For the first time Sylvia heard a girl talk of men as of romantic beings, and of love as a part of the joy and excitement of life.  A young gentleman in a Gibson drawing which she had torn from an old copy of “Life” more nearly approximated Marian’s ideal than even the actors of her remote adoration.  She had a great number of gowns and was quite reckless in her use of them.  She tried to confer upon Sylvia scarf pins, ties, and like articles, for which she declared she had not the slightest use.  In the purchase of soda water and candy at the casino, where she scribbled her father’s initials on the checks, or at the confectioner’s in the village where she enjoyed a flexible credit, her generosity was prodigal.  She was constantly picking up other youngsters and piloting them on excursions that her ready fancy devised; and if they returned late for meals or otherwise incurred parental displeasure, to Marian it was only part of the joke.  She was always late and ingeniously plausible in excusing herself.  “Mother won’t bother; she wants me to have a good time.  And when papa is here he just laughs at me.  Papa’s just the best ever.”

Mrs. Bassett kept lamenting to Professor Kelton her husband’s protracted delay in Colorado.  He was interested in a mining property there and was waiting for the installation of new machinery, but she expected to hear that he had left for Indiana at any time, and he was coming direct to Waupegan for a long stay.  Mrs. Owen was busy with the Waupegan farm and with the direction of her farms elsewhere.  On the veranda of her house one might frequently hear