DOLLARS. "BOTHER the woman,' was all John said when he had read the letter through, but he said it with some emphasis, and it's about as strong a swear - word as he is in the habit of allowing himself. I hadn't said a word. I had merely handed him the letter with a groan which but faintly indicated my frame of mind. It was from my stepmother in England. Now one of my real and abiding consolations for having to live three thousand miles from England is that it puts that distance between me and my father's second wife. I married John six months after father married her; and I spent that six months wondering why on earth he did it, and blaming myself all the time for not being able to reconcile myself to the fact. She was never anything but extraordinarily and overpoweringly affectionate to me. I was "darling Margie" from the very first. My name is Margaret, and nobody else ever calls me anything but Margaret in full. And this very letter began darling Margie as usual. I haven't had many letters from her in the twelve years I have been married and have lived abroad, but when they do come they are brimming over with affection and sympathy. This one brimmed over. I was darling" several more times in the text of it. "your dear John," gist of it was that "darling Gerald," her son by her first husband, Colonel Chaloner, was sailing for New York within a few weeks and would we, with our experience of "the New World," help the dear boy a little "in social ways" on his arrival? American Society seemed to be so cheerful and amusing, she was sure the change would do him good, no darling Margie," and if he did happen to take a fancy to some charming American girl with money, and how charming some of them are! like Lady This whom I meet in London, and Lady That who lives quite close to us here-well, then, how satisfactory it would be if, after all, he ever inherited Halton, where there was money to keep up the ridiculously large house; and so on, and so on. And she knew I would help her in this little conspiracy for her dear one who was so sensible and good. She knew he would value my help. She "had had long talks with him about his future, and he quite understood what would be wisest for him." There were eight pages of false emphasis and false sentiment. I remembered Gerald only as a small boy of ten. I had seen him at father's wedding. Once, before I left home, he had been there for part of his holidays, and I had heard of him from time to time after he John was went to Eton, and did pretty and the well there in athletics. I don't think he ever attained a very exalted position in school. He was certainly a spoilt boy when I had seen him, with a taste for practical jokes that was galling to his elders, and I remembered boxing his ears when I caught him putting a barn-yard cock into the top shelf of my wardrobe one evening, and getting into trouble with his mother for having done it. John had taken him in hand, and the boy had been rather friendly with him-boys always do get on well with him. But that was a long time ago. And here we were, settled in a New York apart ment for the winter, very comfortable and peaceful, and utterly disinclined to be bearleaders to any young gentleman with no occupation, idling about the world in search of a girl with money. If the boy had been any use he surely would not have been loafing about without anything to do from the time he left Eton at eighteen and a half till now, when he was two and twenty. I knew my father wouldn't encourage him to be idle, and yet we had heard incidentally of his having been spun for the army, and of his having gone into some motor works and having left there not very long after. And, anyway, my conviction is that boys of twentytwo have no right whatever to be thinking of matrimony. I had my own boys coming home for holidays at Christmas. I didn't want a loafing boy to be "around," as we say over here, with them-in my way, and in their way, and in the way of our enjoyment of our days together. It wouldn't have been so bad in the summer, in the country, but a small town apartment brings its ocoupants very close together, and they should all be congenial or there is no peace and comfort. "Bother the woman,” was a mild way of expressing our feelings towards Gerald's mamma. He However, there it was. was to land on the 16th of November, and I felt I must be hospitable and get a room ready for him. "I suppose we must have him here, John? It's a hideous bore if he's the sort of young man his mother suggests, but after all he belongs to me in a way; you took me for worse, and he's one of the worses." "I don't mind him if he isn't a 'dude.' If he is, then we won't keep him. You must think out some plan to send him elsewhere." "Yes-Niagara, California, Mexico, the West Indies. He shall see them all, and we will have none of him." But it was distinctly a bore. We don't go into New York society with any great vigour. We have our friends whom we like to meet quietly and to have with us in an intimate way. We don't bother about fashionable "Four hundreds" or society at Newport. John works hard hard and is worried if I ask him to dine out with any one we don't know pretty well, and as to balls, we simply never go to one: indeed, scarcely anybody ever asks us to one now. We spend our summers in New Hampshire, and in a quite unfashionable part of it. I can't imagine any couple in New York much less fitted by inclination or opportunity to carry out my stepmother's plans. Bother the woman for ever having conceived such an idea of us! I began to dislike the young man in advance and to grudge him my spare room, and as the 16th of the month drew near my feelings towards him were distinctly hostile. About the 12th I had a letter from father. He asked me to make Gerald come to us for a time if we could and would have him, and said he knew both John and I would do the best we could for the boy, and that he believed Gerald would be really grateful. So I wrote home to father and repeated that we would do what we could for the boy, and just as I had finished my letter and ordered tea, our electric bell shrieked impatient summonses, and Phyllis Perkins burst into my drawing-room in a whirl of motor-veils and gold handbags, and flung her impulsive arms round my neck and kissed me. said I could have an elegant time in New York for two weeks, and I'm going to." Phyllis is one of our special cronies in New Hampshire, where we spend our summers. She is as pretty as a sea-shell -pink and delicate, fresh and clear, lovely to look at, and a dear. She is as spoilt as any one can spoil so frank and natural a person. Her extraordinary old father does his best to make her intolerable, and the only effect of it is to make her more frightfully independent than anything so young and good-looking has any right to be. I don't think she is a bit more thoughtless of other people than girls of nineteen usually are, and she is generous and affectionate, and altogether charming. Narramore T. Perkins is, socially speaking, a perfectly appalling person, and Phyllis knows it just as well as we do. But she loves him, and won't have any thing to do with the people who look down on him; and to those who appreciate his good qualities, even if they sometimes wince under his provincialisms and his amazing disregard of convention, she is invariably cordial and friendly. John has business that brings him into contact with Mr Perkins, and is one of Phyllis's special adorations because he believes in Narramore and likes him. She asked for John at once, and wanted to telephone to his office and tell him to hurry home and see her. But John was very busy and would not be back till late. shoe "Tell him, I love him as much as ever, and I'll come and see him often. I want his advice about a young man: it's sure to be worth having." "A young man, Phyllis ?" "Yes, my dear. You see father is set on my marrying so as to help his business. I should have been a boy, and then I could have married just when I wanted to. Dad's worried about it. There's such a lot of business. He seems to run the whole city at home and most of the State. There's the brewery, and the factory, and the hotel, and the theatre: then there's the summer hotel, and the race-track, and the water-works, and the candy - factory, and the railway, and the newspaper, besides the farm and the horses, and all the other things at home; and then Dad bosses everyone in the city as well; and I don't rightly see how I could do all that without a man; but I'm not sure I want just to marry him. Dad thinks he can choose the new partner, but I tell him I want to have a word in it if I've got to board the man for the rest of my life.” Phyllis drank her tea and ate my home-made scones and enjoyed herself, and we talked over our last summer's doings together. I made engagements with her, but told her that after the 16th I might be less free. "Why after the 16th?" "Because I've got a sort of half-brother coming out from England to stay with us." "But why mayn't I see the "Will he ever be one?" And I had to admit that there were chances that Gerald would be a lord some day. Somehow I didn't want to admit it a bit, and Phyllis's very unexpected question rather disturbed me. But still it is pretty certain that old Lord Chaloner will never marry he is fifty-eight, and hasn't done it before. Gerald's father was his next brother, and even though Lord Chaloner hated him like poison he couldn't prevent the title and Halton Graveney going to his nephew, except by having a son of his own. There was every likelihood he would leave every thing he could possibly will away to away to someone else. He hated my stepmother as cordially as he did her first husband, and had never set eyes on Gerald. "My dear, this is perfectly fine. I am going to have lunch or tea or dinner with you every day from the 16th onwards, and make a nature study of this young man from England who will be a lord. I've never seen a lord except the half-witted one that Ella Bradmore caught in Boston and married before his mother could stop her. She has him in a sanatorium now." Phyllis went on to Park Avenue, and left me even more sore and vexed over this boy's arrival than I had been before. It had never occurred to me to expect Phyllis in New York this winter. Yet here she was, and in her reckless way quite unconsciously adding to my responsibilities and cares. If Gerald dared to cast sheep's eyes at her and her indisputable millions of dollars I should be frantic. To begin with, I couldn't think of Phyllis married to anybody unworthy of her frank and affectionate nature, and though I knew she was level-headed, would her father be able to resist the idea of a peerage for his child? then, what would my stepmother and all the Chaloner relations say to Mr Perkins and of Mr Perkins? The very thought of it made me shudder; and, as to what he would say of them and to them-well, only Mr Perkins's own choice and varied vocabulary would be equal to the strain! And However, John laughed at me when he came home, and told me I was climbing hills before I had got to them. I wanted to please father if I could, and I went down to the dock to meet Gerald's ship when she came in. It was a nasty cold day and docks are draughty cold places. I found Gerald amongst the baggage belonging to the C.'s and recognised him easily. He was "ver-y English," any one could see, and he was quite cool and collected while a good many other travellers were fussing and agitated. I explained my self to him, and never saw any young man blush more deeply or seem 80 taken aback when I told him his mother had written and commended him to us, and that I had the carriage ready to take him home. "Oh! but really it's too good of you, and I couldn't think of it. I am going to the Beaulieu Hotel. It would be beastly unfair to sponge on you like that, and really I'd rather go to the hotel; of course I don't mean that, but I think I must go there." However, I said John would be disappointed and so should I, and that father had written as well, saying he expected him to come to me. "I didn't know the governor had written -I mean father. He didn't want me to come, you see, but mother made him want it-I mean, send me out." The boy seemed uneasy, and it made me shy and uneasy too. He was a nice-looking boy anyway, and seemed better mannered than he had been ten years ago. Eton had done its work there. I prevailed, and he came with me. We left his baggage with the express and got home in time for tea. Somehow we were both ill at ease, and I couldn't throw off the feeling. Several times I felt myself on the point of asking him what had brought him out to America, and then drew up short in my conversation, for I was determined not to be told about any matrimonial schemes he might have in his mind. I asked him all about our people at home, and what |