hardly keep from telling you, and I'm afraid if you stay here I'll not
have strength of character to resist."

"Tell _us_, Betty," suggested Kitty. "Lloyd will hide her ears while you
confide in us."

"No, indeed!" laughed Betty. "The cat is half out of the bag when a
secret is once shared, and I know you couldn't keep from telling Lloyd
more than an hour or two."

Just then Lloyd, leaning forward, pounced upon something at Betty's
feet. It was the sample of pink chiffon that had dropped from the
envelope.

"Sherlock Holmes the second!" she cried. "I've discovahed the secret. It
has something to do with Eugenia's rose wedding, and mothah is going to
give me my bridesmaid's dress as a birthday present. Own up now, Betty.
Isn't that it?"

Betty darted a startled look at Dora. "Well," she admitted, cautiously,
"if it were a game of hunt the slipper, I'd say you were getting rather
warm. That is _not_ the present your mother mentioned, although it _is_
a sample of the bridesmaids' dresses. Eugenia got the material in Paris
for all of them. I'm at liberty to tell you that much."

"Is that the wedding where you are to be maid of honor, Princess?" asked
Grace Campman, one of the girls who had been posing in the plum-tree,
and who had followed her down to hear the news.

"Yes," answered Lloyd. "Is it any wondah that I'm neahly wild with
curiosity?"

"Make her tell," urged an excited chorus. "Just half a day beforehand
won't make any difference."

"Let's all begin and beg her," suggested Grace.

Lloyd, long used to gaining her own way with Betty by a system of
affectionate coaxing hard to resist, turned impulsively to begin the
siege to wrest the secret from her, but another reference to the maid of
honor by Grace made her pause. Then she said suddenly, with the
well-known princess-like lifting of the head that they all admired:

"No, don't tell me, Betty. A maid of _honah_ should be too honahable to
insist on finding out things that were not intended for her to know. I
hadn't thought. If mothah took all the trouble of sending a
special-delivery lettah to you to keep me from knowing till my birthday,
I'm not going to pry around trying to find out."

"Well, if you aren't the _queerest_," began Grace. "One would think to
hear you talk that 'maid of honor' was some great title to be lived up
to like the 'Maid of Orleans,' and that only some high and mighty
creature like Joan of Arc could do it. But it's nothing more