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............