o see
Humpty Dumpty, when Nance and I were little things."

"I've got eighty-three cents," said Nancy. "I'd like to see the color
of _your_ money, ma'am, before we do any gallivanting."

"Well,--I'm not going to sit here gazing at that cake another
minute,--_please_ give me a slice, Nancy, sugar-pie, lambkin,--just a
wee little scrooch of it," begged Alma, snuffing the handsome chocolate
masterpiece of Nancy's culinary skill. Nancy took off a crumb and gave
it to her, which elicited a wail of indignation from Alma.

"Well, here you are. And it'll give you a nice tummy-ache, too,"
predicted Nancy, cutting off a generous slice. "Good heavens--there's
the door-bell, Mother!" She stopped, knife in hand and listened,
petrified. "Who on earth can be coming here at this time of night, and
all of us in our dressing-gowns. Alma, you're the most nearly dressed
of all of us. Here, pin up your hair. There it goes again. Fly!"

Alma seized a handful of hairpins, and thrusting them into her hair as
she went, ran out of the room.

Nancy and her mother listened with eyebrows raised.

"Must be a letter or something," Nancy surmised. "You don't
suppose--it couldn't be----"

Alma forestalled her conjectures, whatever they might have been, by
entering the room with her face shining and an opened letter in her
hand.

"It's an _invitation_, Nancy," she beamed. "Isn't that exciting?
Elise Porterbridge wants us to come to a 'little dance she's giving
next Friday night.' And the chauffeur is waiting for an answer."

"Funny she was in such a hurry," remarked Nancy. "I suppose someone
fell out, and she's trying to get her list made up. What do you think,
Mother?"

"Why, it's delightful. I want you to know Elise better anyway. You
know her aunt married the Prince Brognelotti, and she will probably do
everything for that girl when she makes her debut." Mrs. Prescott
rustled over to the writing-table and despatched a note in her flowing,
pointed hand.

"Hush, Mamma, the chauffeur will hear you," cautioned Nancy with a
slight frown. It always pricked her when Alma or her mother said
snobbish little things, and roused her democratic pride--the stiffest
pride in the world.

"A dance," carolled Alma, when the door had slammed again behind the
emissary of the Porterbridge heiress. "A real, sure enough dance!"
She seized Nancy by the waist and whirled her about; then suddenly she
stopped so abruptly that Nancy bumped har