ss I ought to be able to do it.
I've practiced for _hours_ in front of the glass doing it."

"For mercy's sake that's nothing. So have I. Who hasn't?"

Madeleine referred the question to Lydia, "Lyd has seen her later than
anybody. She saw her in London. Just think of going to the theater in
London--as if it was anywhere. She says they're crazy about her over
there."

"_Oh, wild!_" Lydia told them. "Her picture's in every single window!"

"Which one? Which one?" they clamored, hanging on her answer
breathlessly.

"That fascinating one with the rose, where she's holding her head
sideways and--" Oh, yes, they had that one, their exclamation cut her
short, relieved that their collections were complete.

"Lyd met a woman on the steamer coming back whose sister-in-law has the
same hairdresser," Madeleine went on.

They were electrified. "Oh, _honestly_? Is it her own?" They trembled
visibly before solution of a problem which had puzzled them, as they
would have said, "for eternities."

"Every hair," Lydia affirmed, "and naturally that color."

Their enthusiasm was prodigious, "How grand! How perfectly grand!"

They turned on Lydia with reproaches. "Here you've been back two months
and we haven't got a bit of good out of you. Think of your having known
that, all this--"

"Her mother's sick, you know," Madeleine Hollister explained.

"She hasn't been so sick but what Lydia could get out to go buggy-riding
with your brother Paul ever since he got back this last time."

Lydia, as though she wished to lose herself, had been entering with a
feverish intensity into the spirit of their lively chatter; but now,
instead of responding with some prompt, defensive flippancy, she colored
high and was silent. A clock above them struck five. "Oh, I must get
on," she cried; "I'm down here, you know, to walk home with Father."

They laughed loudly, "Oh, yes, we know all about this sudden enthusiasm
for Poppa's society. Where are you going to meet Paul?"

Lydia looked about at the crush of drays, trolley-cars, and
delivery-wagons jamming the busy street, "Well, not here down-town," she
replied, her tone one of satisfied security.

A confused and conscious stir among her companions and a burst of talk
from them cut her short. They cried variously, according to their
temperaments, "Oh, there he comes now!" "I think it's mean Lydia's
gobbling him up from under our noses!" "I used to have a ride or two
behind that gray while Lyd