do so, to bring
with them the men who were taking them to the hop. She did not know who
these men were.

Shortly after four Helen and Lily Pearl arrived in a flutter. Mrs.
Harold had not felt it incumbent upon her to include Foxy Grandpa,
concluding that he could find diversion for an hour or two while his
charges were with their school-chums. When Helen and Lily arrived upon
the scene, Mrs. Harold's face was a study. Foxy Grandpa was evidently
too dull to be critical and Columbia Heights was at a safe distance.

Both Lily Pearl and Helen were gotten up regardless. Each wore
extravagant gowns, each had done up her hair and supplemented it by
wonderful creations of false puffs. Each wore dangling ear-rings and the
complexion of each girl had been "assisted."

Poor Mrs. Harold felt as though a couple of chorus girls had invaded her
little sanctum, and Peggy and Polly were furious. But it was too late
then to retreat and a few moments later the midshipmen began to pour
into the sitting-room, the two who were to take Helen and Lily being men
whom Mrs. Harold had always avoided, feeling that they were no
companions for the frank, unaffected girls she loved so dearly. She
resolved to keep her eye piped.

It was a merry afternoon. Rosalie scintillated, and her scintillation
proved infectious for Jean Paul, upon whom she had made a deep
impression at Thanksgiving; he instantly appropriated her, greatly to
Mrs. Harold's amusement, for she was never too fully occupied to notice
significant signs.

Quiet, dignified Bert Taylor had promptly taken bonny Natalie under his
serene protection. And Juno! Well she was sorely divided between Doug's
towering seventy-four inches and Gordon's sixty-nine, though she strove
to conceal the exaltation which her uniformed gallants stirred in her
soul by bringing to bear upon them all the superlative superiority which
she had studied as the acme of success in the habitues of the Hotel
Astor. With Douglas it worked to a charm. He rose to the corresponding
role as a trout to a fly, but poor Gordon was only too thankful when the
companionship and conversation became more general. The superior young
lady from the metropolis was beyond his ken. Little Nelly Bolivar's
sweetness and quaint humor filled his ideals to far greater
satisfaction. He had met Nelly first at Severndale and several times
since with Mrs. Harold, who had often invited her to spend the weekend
at Wilmot, where she had looked t