dly. "I was always too antique for
her to notice. I sha'n't be surprised if she stumbles over me to-night,
not noticing that I'm here."

"If she does," called Bob, from the depths of a closet which he was
sweeping out under Sally's direction, "she'll settle with me! She'll find
I've grown a few inches since she used to call me Sally's 'everlasting
little brother.'"

It was all done at last. Sally went to dress, wearily exhorting herself
to remember that her room was not her room to-night, and that she must
not forget and leave so much as a stray hair-pin on the freshly washed
and ironed linen of the little toilet-table.

She stowed away, under the couch on which she was to sleep, the clean
cambric house-dress she meant to put on the next morning, feeling that it
would not be at all surprising if she were unable to rise from that couch
to get breakfast, and wondering what Dorothy Chase could do about
breakfast if thrown upon her own resources. It was so unusual for Sally's
vigorous young frame to experience such exhaustion after even more severe
effort than that of the past day that she could only wonder what it
meant, and finally decided, after some speculation, that it was the
effect of these first warm days of spring, combined with the stress of
entertaining under difficulties.

"Well, here we are!" Max's voice could be heard in the hall outside,
ushering in his guests. "Go single file down this passage--you can't get
through side by side!"

Sally went hurriedly forward and met Dorothy Chase's smartly tailored
figure in the middle of the tiny passage.

"Goodness gracious!" Bob and Alec and Mr. Timothy Rudd heard a familiar
high-pitched voice exclaim. "You don't mean to tell us you live in this
mouse-hole! Actually, my hat hits on both sides!"

Then came Neil Chase's barytone drawl--how well Bob remembered hating the
sound of it with a profound hatred when it had been addressed
contemptuously to him! "Really, Dorothy--you know--I told you that brim
of yours was an inch and a half beyond the limit, and this proves it!"

But Sally's pretty head was held high. If she had a headache, its effect
was visible only in her brilliant cheeks.

"You always ran to extremes, Dorothy, dear. Why didn't you take that
absurd creation off in the vestibule? Neil, how are you? Have you your
best Chesterfieldian manner with you? Because you'd better leave it
outside; the apartment's not large enough for you and it, too!"

"The s