in each involuntary turn and gesture; the blossom of her
face lifted and swayed like that of a flower delicately poised upon
its stalk. She was _like_ a flower chatting with a breeze.

She forgot altogether, as a present fact, that she looked pretty; but
she had known it once, when she dressed herself, and been glad of it;
and something lasted from the gladness just enough to keep out of her
head any painful, conscious question of how she _was_ seeming. That,
and her innate sense of things proper and refined, made her manners
what Mrs. Van Alstyne pronounced them,--"exquisite."

That was all Mrs. Van Alstyne waited to find out. She did not go deep;
hence she took quick fancies or dislikes, and a great many of them.

She got Rosamond over into a corner with herself, and they had
everybody round them. All the people in the room were saying how
lovely Miss Holabird looked to-night. For a little while that seemed a
great and beautiful thing. I don't know whether it was or not. It was
pleasant to have them find it out; but she would have been just as
lovely if they had not. Is a party so very particular a thing to be
lovely in? I wonder what makes the difference. She might have stood on
that same square of the Turkey carpet the next day and been just as
pretty. But, somehow, it seemed grand in the eyes of us girls, and it
meant a great deal that it would not mean the next day, to have her
stand right there, and look just so, to-night.

In the midst of it all, though, Ruth saw something that seemed to her
grander,--another girl, in another corner, looking on,--a girl with a
very homely face; somebody's cousin, brought with them there. She
looked pleased and self-forgetful, differently from Rose in her
prettiness; _she_ looked as if she had put herself away, comfortably
satisfied; this one looked as if there were no self put away anywhere.
Ruth turned round to Leslie Goldthwaite, who stood by.

"I do think," she said,--"don't you?--it's just the bravest and
strongest thing in the world to be awfully homely, and to know it, and
to go right on and have a good time just the same;--_every day_, you
see, right through everything! I think such people must be splendid
inside!"

"The most splendid person I almost ever knew was like that," said
Leslie. "And she was fifty years old too."

"Well," said Ruth, drawing a girl's long breath at the fifty years,
"it was pretty much over then, wasn't it? But I think I should
like--just