for her
by the sight of girls to whom it was not a scene of triumph, to whom it
was no less than a battlefield, where the vanquished face defeat with
the fixed and piteous smile of the hopeless wallflower.

Her heart yearned over her eldest daughter. Poor, clever, pretty Jemima,
who knew so well what she wanted of life, and wanted it so determinedly!
A world of which carefree gaiety is the essential element might be very
cruel to Jemima. If Kate could have plucked out her own charm by the
roots and given it to her child for a weapon, she would have done it
thankfully.

She fell asleep at last over one of the prayers that had been
unconsciously upon her lips that day: "Make people nice to them, God!
You must see that my girls have partners, both of them, since I am not
there to attend to it myself."

Kate's relations with her Creator, while informal, were remarkably
confident, for a woman who believed herself non-religious....

It was a worn and leaden-eyed professor who returned the adventurers to
Storm late the next day.

"Take me to a bed," he demanded wearily. "No, I shall not have supper,
nor a julep, nor anything but a bed. I'd like to sleep without stirring
for a week!"

Jacqueline embraced him with the arm that was not at the moment
embracing her mother. "Poor old Goddy! Was it done to a frazzle,
turkey-trotting with all the chaperons? You ought to have seen 'em,
Mummy! Ladies as old as you are, yes, and older! hopping about like
Dervishes. I'm glad you don't do such things.--But it was glorious!
Crowds of beaux, and I tore all the lace off my petticoat, and we made
the band play 'Home, Sweet Home,' five times. You know that is what they
play when the party is over."

"Still?" murmured Kate, smiling. She had a momentary recollection of
times when she, too, had made the band repeat "Home, Sweet Home," she
with Basil Kildare....

"As for Jemmy," went on the eager, excited voice. "You just ought to
have seen her! My, my!"

"What about Jemmy?" asked the mother, quickly.

"Why, she gathered in the handsomest man in the room, simply annexed
him. He broke in on every dance and took her to a corner to talk! All
those snippy girls in the dressing-room were wild with jealousy. Don't
ask me how she did it. _I_ don't know! Tell mother how you did it, Jem."

"Oh, it was simple enough," said the other, shrugging. "I saw that I was
not going to have a very good time unless I had somebody to fall back
on, so I sel