ads rose above their knowledge of their light purses.

They were congregated together now, holding a grand family council
around the centre-table, and Dolly was the principal feature, as usual;
and, embarrassing as the subject of said council was, not one of them
looked as if it was other than a most excellent joke that Dolly, having
been invited into the camps of the Philistines, should find she had
nothing to put on to grace the occasion. And as to Dolly,--well, that
young person stood in the midst of them in her shabby, Frenchy little
hat, slapping one pink palm with a shabby, shapely kid glove, her eyes
alight, her comical dismay and amusement displaying itself even in the
arch of her brows.

"And so the Philistine leader pounced upon me herself," she was saying.
"You know the 'Ark,' Phil? Well, they were all in the Ark,--the Rev.
Bilberry in front, and the boys and girls filling up the corners; so you
may imagine the effect produced when they stopped, and Lady Augusta
bent over the side to solemnly proclaim her intention of inviting me
to partake of coffee and conversation on Friday night, with an air of
severely wondering whether I would dare to say 'No!'"

"Why did n't you say it?" said Aimee. "You know it will be an awful
bore, Dolly. Those Bilberry clan gatherings always are. You have said so
yourself often enough."

"Of course I have," returned Dolly. "And of course it will be, but
it would be dreadfully indiscreet to let the Bilberry element know I
thought so. The Bilberry doors once closed against us, where is our
respectability, and Phil's chance of success among the Philistines? It
is bad enough, of course, but there is reason to be thankful that I am
the only victim. The rest of you would be sure to blunder into the B.
B. B.'s [meaning the Bilberry black books], and that _would_ be an
agreeable state of affairs. 'Toinette, look at Tod, he is sitting in the
coal-box eating Phil's fusees."

In 'Toinette we find Mrs. Phil, a handsome creature, young enough to
have been in the school-room, but with the face and figure of a Greek
goddess, and a pair of eyes lovely enough to haunt one's dreams as a
memory for a lifetime, and as to the rest, an inconsistent young madcap,
whose beauty and spirit seemed only a necessary part of the household
arrangements, and whose son and heir, in the person of the enterprising
Tod (an abbreviate of Theodore), was the source of unlimited domestic
enjoyment and the object of