mother's shoulder. "Well, folks that haven't got real worries
will certainly manufacture them! To worry about Lydia's future in
Endbury! Aren't you afraid the sun won't rise some day? If ever there
was any girl that had a smooth road in front of her--"

The door-bell rang. "They've come! They've come!" cried Mrs. Emery
wildly.

"Lydia wouldn't ring the bell, and her train isn't due till ten," Mrs.
Mortimer reminded her.

"Oh, yes. Well, then, it's the new sideboard. I am so--"

"It's a boy with a big pasteboard box," contradicted Mrs. Mortimer,
looking down the hall to the open front door.

Seeing someone there to receive it, the boy set the box inside the
screen door and started down the steps.

"Bring it here! Bring it here!" called Mrs. Mortimer, commandingly.

"It's for Lydia," said Mrs. Emery, looking at the address. She spoke
with an accent of dramatic intensity, and a flush rose to her fair
cheeks.

Her olive-skinned daughter looked at her and laughed. "What did you
expect?"

"But he didn't care enough about her coming home to be in town to-day!"
Mrs. Emery's maternal vanity flared up hotly.

Mrs. Mortimer laughed again and began taking the layers of crumpled
wax-paper out of the box. "Oh, that was the trouble with you, was it?
That's nothing. He had to be away to see about a new electrical plant in
Dayton. Did you ever know Paul Hollister to let anything interfere with
business?" This characterization was delivered with an intonation that
made it the most manifest praise.

Her mother seconded it with unquestioning acquiescence. "No, that's a
fact; I never did."

Mrs. Mortimer in her turn had an accent of dramatic intensity as she
cried out, "Oh! they are American Beauties! The biggest I ever saw!"

The two women looked at the flowers, almost awestruck at their size.

"Have you a vase?" Mrs. Mortimer asked dubiously.

Mrs. Emery rose to the occasion. "The Japanese umbrella stand."

There was a pause as they reverently arranged the great sheaf of
enormous flowers. Then Mrs. Emery began, "Marietta--" She hesitated.

"Well," Mrs. Mortimer prompted her, a little impatiently.

"Do you really think that he--that Lydia--?"

Marietta accepted with a somewhat pinched smile her mother's boundary
lines of reticence. "Of course. Did you ever know Paul Hollister to give
up anything he wanted?"

Her mother shook her head.

Mrs. Mortimer rose with a "Well, then!" and the air of one who has said
all th