h to grow intimate, as she did,
with Rosamond Holabird. There were identical points of character
between the two. They were both so real.

"You don't want to _play_ anything," Barbara Holabird had said to
Rosamond once, in some little discussion of social appearances and
pretensions. "And that's the beauty of you!"

It was the beauty of Desire Ledwith also; only, with Rosamond, her
ambitions had clothed themselves with a grace and delicateness that
would have their own perfect and thorough as far as it went; and
with Desire, the same demands of true living had chafed into an
impatience with shams and a blunt disregard of and resistance to all
conventionalisms.

"You are a good deal alike, you two," Kenneth Kincaid said to them
one day, in a talk they all three happened to have together.

And he had told Rosamond afterward that there was "something grand
in Desire Ledwith; only grand things almost always have to grow with
struggles."

Rosamond had told this again to Desire.

It was not much wonder that she began to be happier; to have a
hidden comfort of feeling that perhaps the "waiting with all her
might" was nearly over, and the "by and by" was blossoming for her,
though the green leaves of her own shy sternness with herself folded
close down about the sweetening place, and she never parted them
aside to see where the fragrance came from.

* * * * *

They were going to have a grand, large, beautiful supper party in
the woods.

Mrs. Holabird and Mrs. Hobart were the matrons, and gave out the
invitations.

"I don't think I could possibly spend a Tuesday afternoon with a
little 't,'" said Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks laughing, and tossing down
poor, dear, good Mrs. Hobart's note upon her table. "It is _rather_
more than is to be expected!"

"Doctor and Mrs. Hautayne are here, and Dakie Thayne is home from
West Point. It will be rather a nice party."

"The Holabirds seem to have got everything into their own hands,"
said Mrs. Marchbanks, haughtily. "It is always a pity when people
take the lead who are not exactly qualified. Mrs. Holabird _will_
not discriminate!'

"I think the Holabirds are splendid," spoke up Lily, "and I don't
think there's any fun in sticking up by ourselves! I can't bear to
be judicious!"

Poor little Lily Marchbanks had been told a tiresome many times that
she must be "judicious" in her intimacies.

"You can be _pleasant_ to everybody," said mother and e