us that some one was coming directly toward us, and saw
Sylvia Latham crossing the shop from the door, her rapid, swinging gait
bringing her to us before short-sighted Miss Lavinia had a chance to
raise her lorgnette.

Sylvia was genuinely glad to see us, and she expressed it both by look
and speech, without the slightest symptom of gush, yet with the confiding
manner of one who craves companionship. I had, in fact, noticed the same
thing during our call the afternoon before.

"Well, and what are we buying to-day?" asked Miss Lavinia, clearing her
voice by a little caressing sound halfway between a purr and a cluck, and
patting the hand that lingered affectionately on hers.

"I really--don't--know," answered Sylvia, smiling at her own hesitation.
"Mamma says that if I do not get my clothes together before people begin
to come back from the South, I shall be nowhere, so she took me with
her to Mme. Couteaux's this morning. Mamma goes there because she says
it saves so much trouble. Madame keeps a list of every article her
customers have, and supplies everything, even down to under linen and
hosiery, so she has made for mamma a plan of exactly what she would need
for next season, and after having received her permission, will at once
begin to carry it out. Of course the clothes will be very beautiful and
harmonious, and mamma has so much on her hands, now that father is
away,--the new cottage at Oaklands is being furnished, and me to
initiate in the way I'm supposed to go,--that it certainly simplifies
matters for her.

"Me? Ah, I do not like the system at all, or Madame Couteaux either, and
the feeling is mutual, I assure you. Without waiting to be asked, even,
she looked me over from head to foot and said that my lines are very bad,
that I curve in and out at the wrong places, that I must begin at once by
wearing higher heels to throw me forward!

"At first I was indignant, and then the ludicrous climbed uppermost, and
I laughed, whereat Madame looked positively shocked, and even mamma
seemed aghast and murmured something apologetic about my having been at
boarding-school in the country, and at college, where I had ridden
horseback without proper instruction, which had injured my figure. Only
imagine, Aunt Lavinia, those glorious gallops among the Rockcliffe Hills
hurting one's body in any way! But then, I suppose body and figure are
wholly different things; at any rate, Madame Couteaux gave a shrug, as if
shedding