'reform,'" remarked Mr. Winton. "She's a reformer herself, you know."

"But only sweat-shops, child labour, civic improvement, preservation of
the wild, and things like that!" cried Leslie so quickly and eagerly, that
both men laughed.

"God be praised!" exclaimed her father.

"God be _fervently_ praised!" echoed her lover.

Before she retired Leslie visited the slippers.

"I'd like to know," she said softly, as she touched a bronze striped
calyx, "I'd like to know how I am to penetrate your location, and find and
fashion anything to outdo you and the squaw, you wood creatures you!" Then
she bent above the flowers and whispered: "Tuck this in the toe of your
slipper! Three times to-night it was in his eyes, and on his tongue, but
his slowness let the moment pass. I can 'bide a wee' for my Scotsman, I
can bide forever, if I must; for it's he only, and no other."

The moccasins soon had been ground to pulp and carried away on a non-skid
tire while at three o'clock in the morning a cross, dishevelled society
woman, in passing from her dressing room to her bed, stumbled over the
osier basket, kicking it from her way.



CHAPTER III