“Fred is so disagreeable about such things.  But if it couldn’t be told—­” Kate began to doubt again.  “Does it cost extra?”

“Fifty cents—­but it does brighten the hair.  It brings out the natural color—­there is an auburn tint—­”

“But I really meant to have a manicure today.  And we can’t talk in the manicure parlor—­those tables are crowded together so!  I’ve a tremendous lot to tell you, too.  Which would you have, Marion?”

Miss Rose dutifully considered the matter while she continued the scalp massage.  Before they had decided definitely upon the extravagance of a henna rinse, which was only a timid sort of experiment and at best a mere compromise art and nature, Marion had applied the tonic.  It seemed a shame to waste that now with a shampoo, and she did not dare to go for another dish of the tonic; so Kate sighed and consoled herself with a dollar saved, and went without the manicure also.

Rather incoherently she returned to her subject, but she did not succeed in giving Miss Rose anything more than a confused idea of a trip somewhere that would really be an outing, and a tremendous opportunity to make thousands of dollars with very little effort.  This sounded alluring.  Marion mentally cancelled a date with a party going to Venice that evening, and agreed to meet Kate at six o’clock, and hear more about it.

In the candy shop where they ate, her mind was even more receptive to tremendous opportunities for acquiring comparative wealth with practically no initial expense and no effort whatever.  Not being subjected to the distraction of a beauty parlor, Kate forgot to use her carefully modulated, elocutionary voice, and buzzed with details.

“It’s away up in the northern part of the State somewhere, in the mountains.  You know timber land is going to be tremendously valuable—­it is now, in fact.  And this tract of beautiful big trees can be gotten and flumed—­or something—­down to a railroad that taps the country.  It’s in Forest Reserve, you see, and can’t be bought by the lumber companies.  I had the professor explain it all to me again, after I left the Martha, so I could tell you.

“A few of us can club together and take mining claims on the land—­twenty acres apiece.  All we have to do is a hundred dollars’ worth of work—­just digging holes around on it, or something—­every year till five hundred dollars’ worth is done.  Then we can get our deed—­or whatever it is—­and sell the timber.”

“Well, what do you know about that!” Marion exclaimed ecstatically, leaning forward across the little table with her hands clasped.  Nature had given her a much nicer voice than Kate’s, and the trite phrase acquired a pretty distinctiveness just from the way she said it.  “But—­would you have to stay five years, Kate?” she added dubiously.

“No, that’s the beauty of it, you can do all the five hundred dollars’ worth in one year, Marion.”