had not been paid very particular
attention to, and the thing that suited each had been made for them.
They were as becoming to the dresses as the dresses to them.
Twickenham nearly lost its breath as they came into the long
drawing-room of the MacLean house and walked through it after speaking
to the receiving party, and I know now how a mother feels when her
debutante daughters are a success. I will have more sympathy with
Mother than I used to have, and I will try to behave myself and do the
stunts all right for the first year. But she already knows I do not
expect to keep on doing them. I have told her.

Nobody can say again that women can't keep a secret, for not even Miss
Bettie Simcoe, who knows what the Lord is going to do before He does
it, had any idea of the dresses; and though I don't think she or Mrs.
General Gaines liked not being told, they were very nice about it and
said much kinder things than I thought they were capable of saying.
And I really think Elizabeth was pleased also. She actually smiled
when she saw her aunt come in with Miss Araminta. Smiles of late have
been faint and feeble on the face of the affianced young lady, who
isn't playing her part as a person with ancestors ought to play it.
She bounced her old beau and took unto herself a new one, and what I
can't understand is, having done it, why she doesn't carry it off with
a rip-roaring bluff that might fool even herself for a while. But
Elizabeth isn't that sort. Everybody is talking about how miserable
she looks. I'm afraid I put the beau idea in her head, and the idea
has got her in a hole and she doesn't know how to get out of it. I
wish Billy was here. He can get a person out of any sort of hole.

I went to the party with Whythe. He has been away for a week, and
while away got a new dress suit, which, of course, he wore to the party
and looked perfectly grand in it. I think his mother gave the suit to
him, though he didn't say, but he was off attending to some business
for her, and I'm sure he took it out in the new clothes. It would have
been more sensible to have had his teeth fixed, or gotten three new
ones, the rest being all right, but it was natural to prefer the suit,
and much less painful. Whythe is never going to do anything
disagreeable that he can keep from doing.

He was so nice the night of the party that I hadn't the courage to
begin finding out the truth or untruth of what Mr. Willie Prince had
mentione