od bureau top, coiled like a pale snake,
and the remainder was done up on curlers in Topsy twists.)

Over in the east there was the first graying advance of the dawn. (There
had been a "little gathering of the young folks" and then Jane had
finished packing and they had talked for two hours.) Jane felt a little
guilty, and a little foolish--leaping thus into the village spotlight,
sallying forth into the wide world--and a little gay and thrilled. The
morning was coming steadily up the sky; the daily miracle was going on.
And she was going on--_on_! Old Sally's scoldings didn't matter, nor
Marty's smug confidence. She shivered a little but kept her eyes on the
growing glory. She was--going--_on_!

A week later Sarah Farraday tore open the first letter with the New York
postmark.

SALLY DEAR, the typed page began, I meant to write at once, but I've
been settling down so busily! Of course Aunt Lyddy telephoned you of
my safe arrival?--Safe, my dear?--It was positively regal. Visiting
royalty effect. Rodney Harrison met me and I find I had quite
forgotten how very easy to look at he is! He apologized for the taxi
which seemed most opulent to me, because his own speedster was in
the shop, he having "broken a record and some vital organ the night
before, and the mater was using the limousine and the governor was
out of town with the big bus." His pretty plan was for dinner and
the theater and then supper and some dancing, but I thought there
was just the least bit of the King and the Beggar Maid lavishness
about that, so I discreetly revised it to tea.

We purred extravagantly up the Avenue, and how horrified Aunt Lyddy
would be at the taximeter! It makes me think of when we used to play
Hide-and-Seek, "_Twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five,
fifty--ready or not you shall be caught_!"

He had brought me a corsage of orchids and lilies-of-the-valley, and
I had to wear it at tea--and the price of that tea, my dear, would
feed a first family in Wetherby Ridge for a day!--and when I came up
here to my room I found three dozen red roses with stems like stilts
and a three-story red satin box of chocolates. Hardly a thrifty
person, this man-I-met-on-the-boat, as you persist in calling him,
Sally, but the last word in Reception Committees! Just as I had
forgotten his charms, so he seemed to have mislaid the memory of