ultra-Sabbathical repression over my spirits. 19 19 "I believe I'll amuse myself by reading over those old letters," I suggested to mother, as time dragged wearily before the crowd began to gather. But she uttered a shriek, with an ultra-Sabbathical repression over its tone. "Grace, you amaze me!" she said. "She's really a most American child!" Cousin Pollie pronounced severely, having just finished doing the British Isles. After this it seemed that years and years and years of the twentieth century passed—all in a heap. I awoke one morning to find myself set in my ways. Most women, in the formation of their happiness, are willing to let nature take its course, then there are others who are not content with this, but demand a postgraduate course. I, unfortunately, belonged to this latter class. Growing up I was fairly normal, not idle enough at school to forecast a brilliant career in any of the arts, nor studious enough to deserve a prediction of mediocre plodding the rest of my life; but after school came the deluge. I was restless, shabby 20 and single—no one of which mother could endure in her daughter. 20 So I was a disappointment to her, while the rest of the tribe gloated. The name, Grace, with all appurtenances and emoluments accruing thereto, availed nothing. I was a failure. "My pet abomination begins with C," I chattered savagely to myself one afternoon in June, a suitable number of years after the above-mentioned christening, as I made my way to my own private desk in the office of The Oldburgh Herald, pondering family affairs in my heart as I went. "Of course this is at the bottom of the whole agony! They just can't bear to see me turn out to be a newspaper reporter instead of Mrs. Guilford Blake. And I hate everything that they love best—cities, clothes, clubs, culture, civilities, conventions, chiffons!" I was thinking of Cousin Pollie's comment when she first saw a feature story in the Herald signed with my name. "Is the girl named Grace or Disgrace?" she 21 had asked. "Not since America was a wilderness has the name of any Christie woman appeared outside the head-lines of the society column!" 21 "The whole connection has raised its eyebrows," I laughed, when I met the owner and
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