tertain both for Max's sake and their own. Alec
and Bob had not been denied the privilege of inviting certain youthful
intimates, so it was a somewhat diversified company, in point of age,
which laughed and danced and talked and sang, under the lanterns. For
sing they did now and then, when tempted by some popular air from the
little orchestra--which somehow had been enlarged to include several
other instruments besides harp and violin, Josephine arguing that there
must be sound enough to be heard upon the porch and lawn. It was a gay
company, and the fun was at its height when the last guests to arrive
drove up with a proclaiming flourish of a musical horn.

"It's the Chases--we must go out and meet them, Max," and Sally caught at
her brother as he was hastening by. They reached the porch as Neil and
Dorothy descended from their car and looked about them.

"Well, of all the surprises!" was young Mrs. Chase's greeting, as she
swept across the porch in a Paris gown which fairly took one's breath
away, as it was disclosed by the falling open of a gorgeous evening wrap.

Jarvis Burnside, looking out of a porch window at the moment, as he
fanned one of the "prettiest and jolliest girls," after a brisk
"two-step," noted the contrast between Dorothy and Sally. Mrs. Chase was
twenty-four, as he happened to know, but she looked considerably older,
and one would have said there were at least eight years between them. Yet
Sally, although she seemed so girlish, had the hostess's pretty air of
self-possession which is equal to greeting any number of Parisian gowns
and their wearers.

"Yes, we hoped you would enjoy seeing us again with room enough to shake
hands in," and Sally made them welcome with a hearty greeting apiece.

"This you, Sally?" asked Neil Chase, surveying her with interest. "You
look more like sixteen than ever. Going to put your hair up when you get
to be thirty or forty?"

"My hair is as much up as it can be in the circumstances," retorted
Sally, gayly. "Unless I wear a wig, the best I can do is to tie it this
way with a bow."

"That's so; we did hear you had a fever in the spring. You don't look
much like it now--more like an infant cherub. Well, Max, this the old
place you had left you? My congratulations. It's not half bad, you
know--at least as it looked coming up the drive, by the light of the
lanterns. You must hug yourselves to get out of that six-by-nine flat,
if this _is_ a good way out in the coun