he Saturday cotillion, and try to
make her laugh over Carter's drunkenness. Blix knew the type. Catlin
was hardly out of college; but the older girls, even the young women of
twenty-five or six, encouraged and petted these youngsters, driven to
the alternative by the absolute dearth of older men.

"I'm not at home, Victorine," announced Blix, intercepting the maid in
the hall. It chanced that it was not Frank Catlin, but another boy of
precisely the same breed; and Blix returned to Suddhoo, Mrs. Hawksbee,
and Mulvaney with a little cuddling movement of satisfaction.

"There is only one thing I regret about this," she said to Condy Rivers
on the Friday night of that week; "that is, that I never thought of
doing it before." Then suddenly she put up her hand to shield her eyes,
as though from an intense light, turning away her head abruptly.

"I say, what is it? What--what's the matter?" he exclaimed.

Blix peeped at him fearfully from between her fingers. "He's got it
on," she whispered--"that awful crimson scarf."

"Hoh!" said Condy, touching his scarf nervously, "it's--it's very
swell. Is it too loud?" he asked uneasily.

Blix put her fingers in her ears; then:

"Condy, you're a nice, amiable young man, and, if you're not brilliant,
you're good and kind to your aged mother; but your scarfs and neckties
are simply impossible."

"Well, look at this room!" he shouted--they were in the parlor. "You
needn't talk about bad taste. Those drapes--oh-h! those drapes!!
Yellow, s'help me! And those bisque figures that you get with every
pound of tea you buy; and this, this, THIS," he whimpered, waving his
hands at the decorated sewer-pipe with its gilded cat-tails. "Oh,
speak to me of this; speak to me of art; speak to me of aesthetics.
Cat-tails, GILDED. Of course, why not GILDED!" He wrung his hands.
"'Somewhere people are happy. Somewhere little children are at play--'"

"Oh, hush!" she interrupted. "I know it's bad; but we've always had it
so, and I won't have it abused. Let's go into the dining-room, anyway.
We'll sit in there after this. We've always been stiff and constrained
in here."

They went out into the dining-room, and drew up a couple of armchairs
into the bay window, and sat there looking out. Blix had not yet
lighted the gas--it was hardly dark enough for that; and for upward of
ten minutes they sat and watched the evening dropping into night.

Below them the hill fell away so abruptly tha