cheerful if audacious one.

"She looks as if she was dressed in a boiler," she commented, inwardly.
"I wonder if I shall ever live so long--I wonder if I ever _could_ live
long enough to submit to a dress like that. And yet she seems to be
almost happy in the possession of it. But, I dare say, that is the
result of conscious virtue."

It was a very fortunate thing for Dolly that she was not easily
discomposed. Most girls entering a room full of people, evidently
unemployed, and in consequence naturally prone to not too charitable
criticism of new-comers, might have lost self-possession. Not so Dolly
Crewe. Being announced, she came in neither with unnecessary hurry nor
timidly, and with not the least atom of shrinking from the eyes turned
toward her; and, simple and unassuming a young person as she appeared
on first sight, more than one pair of eyes in question found themselves
attracted by the white merino, the white shoulders, the elaborate
tresses, and the serene, innocent-looking orbs.

Lady Augusta advanced slightly to meet her, with a grewsome rustling of
copper-colored stiffness. She did not approve of Dolly at any time, but
she specially disapproved of her habit of setting time at defiance and
ignoring the consequences.

"I am very glad to see you," she said, with the air of a potentate
issuing a proclamation. "I _thought_"--somewhat severely--"that you were
not coming at all."

"Did you?" remarked Dolly, with tranquillity.

"Yes," returned her ladyship. "And I could not understand it. It is nine
o'clock now, and I _believe_ I mentioned eight as the hour."

"I dare say you did," said Dolly, unfurling her small downy fan, and
using it with much serene grace; "but I wasn't ready at eight. I hope
you are very well."

"Thank you," replied her ladyship, icily. "I am very well. Will you
go and take a seat by Euphemia? I allowed her to come into the room
to-night, and I notice that her manner is not so self-possessed as I
should wish."

Dolly gave a little nod of acquiescence, and looked across the room
to where the luckless Euphemia sat edged in a corner behind a row of
painfully conversational elderly gentlemen, who were struggling with
the best intentions to keep up a theological discourse with the Rev.
Marmaduke. Euphemia was the eldest Miss Bilberry. She was overgrown
and angular, and suffered from chronic embarrassment, which was not
alleviated by the eye of her maternal parent being upon her. She was