“How you talk, Martha Wallingford!  Haven’t you been to the theatre every night and Coney Island, and the Metropolitan and—­everything there is to see?”

“There isn’t much to see in New York anyway except the people,” returned the niece.  “People are all I care for anyway, and I don’t call the people I have seen worth counting.  They only came to make a little money out of me and my sleeves.  I am glad I got this dress at McCreery’s.  These sleeves are all right.  If this Mrs. Edes should be a newspaper woman, she can’t make fun of these sleeves anyway.”

“You paid an awful price for that dress,” said her aunt.

“I don’t care.  I got such a lot for my book that I might as well have a little out of it, and you know as well as I do, Aunt Susan, that South Mordan, Illinois, may be a very nice place, but it does not keep up with New York fashions.  I really did not have a decent thing to wear when I started.  Miss Slocumb did as well as she knew how, but her ideas are about three years behind New York.  I didn’t know myself, how should I?  And you didn’t, and as for Pa, he would think everything I had on was stylish if it dated back to the ark.  You ought to have bought that mauve silk for yourself.  You have money enough; you know you have, Aunt Susan.”

“I have money enough, thanks to my dear husband’s saving all his life, but it is not going to be squandered on dress by me, now he is dead and gone.”

“I would have bought the dress for you myself, then,” said the niece.

“No, thank you,” returned the aunt with asperity.  “I have never been in the habit of being beholden to you for my clothes and I am not going to begin now.  I didn’t want that dress anyway.  I always hated purple.”

“It wasn’t purple, it was mauve.”

“I call purple, purple, I don’t call it anything else!” Then the aunt retreated precipitately before the sound of the opening door and entrenched herself in her bedroom, where she stood listening.

Margaret Edes treated the young author with the respect which she really deserved, for talent she possessed in such a marked degree as to make her phenomenal, and the phenomenal is always entitled to consideration of some sort.

“Miss Wallingford?” murmured Margaret, and she gave an impression of obeisance; this charming elegantly attired lady before the Western girl.  Martha Wallingford coloured high with delight and admiration.

“Yes, I am Miss Wallingford,” she replied and asked her caller to be seated.  Margaret sat down facing her.  The young author shuffled in her chair like a school girl.  She was an odd combination of enormous egotism and the most painful shyness.  She realised at a glance that she herself was provincial and pitifully at a disadvantage personally before this elegant vision, and her personality was in reality more precious to her than her talent.