we are all back in the city again, and settled into the old routine; but there is a new excitement in the air. aunt gwendolin insists that i require to go to some fashionable "young ladies' boarding school," to be "finished." she says (but not in grandmother's hearing) that i do not talk as i should, that my voice is quite ordinary, and i must learn the tone of society ladies before i can be brought out.

"you mean the artificial tone?" said uncle theodore, who was present when i was getting my lecture.

"call it what you like, theodore," snapped aunt gwendolin, "it is the tone used by an american society woman;[pg 149] the girl talks yet in the natural voice of a child."

"would that she could always keep it," returned uncle theodore.

after much talking my aunt persuaded my grandmother that i should go to some such school.

"my dear," said grandmother timidly, "your aunt seems to think you may gain much by a period spent in some good school. she may be right. it certainly cannot hurt you, and if it can be of any benefit there is nothing to prevent your having it."

to comfort dear grandmother i raised no objection, and it is settled that i go in the fall term. the choice of a school was left entirely to aunt gwendolin, and she has decided upon the most expensive and most fashionable one in the country. she has been corresponding with the lady principal; my rooms have been ordered; and everything is complete.

one day my aunt placed in my hand one of her monogrammed sheets of writing-paper, pointing to the following paragraph:

"it is the family's wish that much attention be given to preparing the young girl whom i am sending to you, for society; heavy or arduous work in any other line is of secondary consideration. the prestige of your school could not fail to be enhanced by the presence of a spanish girl of good family."

"i am not a spanish girl, aunt gwendolin!" i said.

"i did not say you were," returned my aunt, "i simply said the prestige of her school could not fail to be enhanced by the presence of one."

have i got to live up to that?