ay on either side, and looked about her, her eyes
sparkled with delight. The walls, so sadly in need of a renewal of
their frescoing, had been latticed with thin white strips to the edge
of the heavy molding on the ceiling, and in this lattice work was
twined smilax most lavishly. Bay trees and tall palms had been used to
make recesses like little rooms, in several places, and these each
seemed to fairly shriek at the beholder, "Do come and sit out a dance
in me! That's just what I was put here for! Oh, do come!"

The faded upholstery on the tall, high-backed chairs had been covered
over with slips of rose-colored chintz, and in each little recess had
been placed a matching sofa. It was a very bad color to be close to
Arethusa's hair, but so thoroughly pleasing to see that she never once
thought of the other side of it. The crystal-draped chandeliers had all
had their electric light bulbs shaded with big, pink tissue-paper
roses, and extra lights, similarly shaded, had been scattered
throughout the green and the lattice work on the walls. The whole room
was bathed in a soft, rosy glow. An orchestra played all unseen behind
a thick bank of palms on a little platform at the far end of the room.
It had quite the effect of music at a distance.

"Isn't it beautiful!" Arethusa drew a long, long breath of admiration.
"Oh, isn't it just beautiful!"

"Yes," replied Mr. Bennet. "The decorations are always rather good."

But his agreement altogether lacked a proper fervency, for he had a
wretched cold of the thoroughly uncomfortable kind, and he did not feel
fervent about anything in the world.

Arethusa was all solicitude. "You don't feel very well, do you? I'm so
sorry! Let's go sit down in one of those dear little places." They had
been rather early in their arrival at the January Cotillion, hardly
anybody was here as yet. "Wouldn't you like to?" She was almost
maternal in her desire to make him as comfortable as possible.

And Mr. Bennet was quite agreeable to the idea of being made comfortable.
So they strolled almost the length of the ball-room to find a little
recess far enough away from the door, so that Arethusa could be sure
there would be no draught to make his cold worse.

The little recess she finally selected was so well screened with green
that their occupancy of it on the pink chintz-covered sofa was as
effectively hidden from the ball-room proper as if they had actually
been in some other apartment. This de