several times during those idle days before the beginning of school. It
was Burke's Peerage. She had looked into it because of the story of
Edryn, finding many mottoes as interesting as the one in the great amber
window on the stairs. Now she turned to the B's and rapidly scanned the
columns till she came to the Berkeleys. For generations there had been
an Evelyn in the family. What a long, long time they had had to shape
their lives by their motto, and grow worthy of their family traditions!
No wonder that Evelyn had that air of gentle breeding and calm poise
like Madam Chartley's.

Mary had already on a previous occasion looked in vain for the name of
Ware, and when she failed to find it, consoled herself with the thought
that for three hundred years it had been handed down with honour in the
annals of New England. Staunch patriots the Wares had been in the old
colony days, sturdy and stern of conscience, and Mary had been taught to
believe that their struggle to wrest a living from the rocky hills
while they built up a state was as worthy of honour as any knightly deed
of the Round Table. She was prouder of those early ancestors who delved
and spun and toiled with their hands at yeoman tasks, than the later
ones, who were ministers and judges and college professors.

Until now she had never attached any importance to the fact that a
branch of her mother's family had been a titled one, because she was
such a patriotic little American, and because so many years had elapsed
since that particular branch had severed its connection with the family
in the old world. But now Mary felt a peculiar thrill of satisfaction
when she found the name in the peerage and realized that some of the
blue blood which had inspired those great-great-grandfathers to knightly
deeds was coursing through her own veins. The crest was a winged spur,
with the motto, "Ready, aye ready."