"And now the man puts on gloves and a tall hat to come here on Sundays,
and the woman won't call until you've called first," retorted Kate;
"perhaps you call that improvement. The fact is, Josephine," continued
the young girl, folding her arms demurely, "we might as well admit it at
once--these people don't like us."

"That's impossible!" said Mrs. Hale, with sublime simplicity. "You don't
like them, you mean."

"I like them better than you do, Josie, and that's the reason why I feel
it and YOU don't." She checked herself, and after a pause resumed in a
lighter tone: "No; I sha'n't go to the station; I'll commune with nature
to-day, and won't 'take any humanity in mine, thank you,' as Bill the
driver says. Adios."

"I wish Kate would not use that dreadful slang, even in jest," said
Mrs. Scott, in her rocking-chair at the French window, when Josephine
reentered the parlor as her sister walked briskly away. "I am afraid
she is being infected by the people at the station. She ought to have a
change."

"I was just thinking," said Josephine, looking abstractedly at her
mother, "that I would try to get John to take her to San Francisco this
winter. The Careys are expected, you know; she might visit them."

"I'm afraid, if she stays here much longer, she won't care to see them
at all. She seems to care for nothing now that she ever liked before,"
returned the old lady ominously.