Now, as so often happens in American families, the banker and his wife
stood in some awe of their daughter. There was not that confidence
between them which one traditionally supposes to exist between parents
and children. I imagine that there is no doubt that the adolescent
finds it much easier to confide in some one other than the parents who
would seem to be her proper confidants.

At any rate the banker and his wife were simply staggered. They dared
not broach the subject to the Principal Girl, and in their distress
turned to the family lawyer. As they were too cowardly to take his
first advice--perhaps they were afraid the daughter would lie, they
sometimes do in the best regulated families,--it was decided to put a
discreet person "on the job," and discover first of all what was
really going on.

The result of the investigation was at first consoling, and then
amazing.

They discovered that the bunches of violets were ordered at a smart
down town florist by the girl herself, and by her order delivered at
the school door by a liveried messenger boy, who, by her orders,
awaited her arrival. As for the closed carriage, that she also bespoke
herself at a smart livery stable where she was known. When she entered
it, she was at once driven to the Park Street station, where she
bought a round trip ticket to Waltham. There she walked to the river,
hired a boat, rowed herself up stream, tied her boat at a wooden bank,
climbed the slope, and sat there all the afternoon, sometimes reading,
and sometimes merely staring out at the river, or up at the sky. At
sunset she rowed back to the town, returned to the city, and walked