looked as if it had been planned for the purpose, and
its wide, upstanding plaited lace at throat and wrist made her neck look
thinner, her forearm sharp and veined. Her hair she had "crimped" and
parted in the middle, puffed high--it was so that hair had been worn in
Lulu's girlhood.

"_Well_!" said Ina, when she saw this coiffure, and frankly examined it,
head well back, tongue meditatively teasing at her lower lip.

For travel Lulu was again wearing Ina's linen duster--the old one.

Ninian appeared, in a sack coat--and his diamond. His distinctly convex
face, its thick, rosy flesh, thick mouth and cleft chin gave Lulu once
more that bold sense of looking--not at him, for then she was shy and
averted her eyes--but at his photograph at which she could gaze as much
as she would. She looked up at him openly, fell in step beside him. Was
he not taking her to the city? Ina and Dwight themselves were going
because she, Lulu, had brought about this party.

"Act as good as you look, Lulie," Mrs. Bett called after them. She gave
no instructions to Ina who was married and able to shine in her conduct,
it seemed.

Dwight was cross. On the way to the station he might have been heard to
take it up again, whatever it was, and his Ina unmistakably said: "Well,
now don't keep it going all the way there"; and turned back to the
others with some elaborate comment about the dust, thus cutting off her
so-called lord from his legitimate retort. A mean advantage.

The city was two hours' distant, and they were to spend the night. On
the train, in the double seat, Ninian beside her among the bags, Lulu
sat in the simple consciousness that the people all knew that she too
had been chosen. A man and a woman were opposite, with their little boy
between them. Lulu felt this woman's superiority of experience over her
own, and smiled at her from a world of fellowship. But the woman lifted
her eyebrows and stared and turned away, with slow and insolent winking.

Ninian had a boyish pride in his knowledge of places to eat in many
cities--as if he were leading certain of the tribe to a deer-run in a
strange wood. Ninian took his party to a downtown cafe, then popular
among business and newspaper men. The place was below the sidewalk, was
reached by a dozen marble steps, and the odour of its griddle-cakes took
the air of the street. Ninian made a great show of selecting a table,
changed once, called the waiter "my man" and rubbed soft hands on