y got on at the party.

"First rate. Mrs. Wade met her at the door of the drawing room and
kissed her. 'How you've grown, Mary!' said she, and then she took her
round and introduced her to all the girls in the room, including some of
those who've been cutting her right and left, as well as to every boy
she didn't know already. Of course she danced every dance, and had the
best time going."

"And, of course, she put it all down to her own superior attractions?"

"Just exactly. This morning she didn't want to help me make the beds!"

Mary's Christmas present had been a beautiful silver-plated cornet, and
of course she must learn to play it when she went back to the convent.
Word came shortly that the music master employed there could not
undertake to teach her to play the instrument, but that a "professor"
could be secured to go out from Detroit twice a week--if desired. We
seemed to be in for it, so the lessons were desired, and we comforted
ourselves with the assurance that if Mary did not turn out to be a
tiptop reciter she would surely prove a tiptop cornet player. Her
unusual talent would justify my wife in her unusual step, and the
society of Lake City would forgive her for attempting to thrust the girl
into its midst as an equal. Many of our acquaintances seemed to take
mother's view of the case,--"Matter out of place becomes _dirrt_!"--and
Belle was put on her mettle to convince the majority that she had done
exactly the right thing in thus disclassing people. Disclassing
people? In a free republic!

We received glowing accounts of the cornet lessons.

"Dear girl!" said Belle enthusiastically. "She must have the real
artistic temperament to be so determined to excel in one or other of the
arts."

"She's dramatic, anyway," said I, and I was confirmed in my opinion
along in the spring, when the cornet, and aught else, appeared to have
palled upon the versatile Mary. She wrote that she had serious thoughts
of taking the veil.

"Bah!" said I; "what's she after now? She wants to scare us into
something."

Belle wrote privately to the Lady Superior, telling her that if she
considered Mary would be a desirable acquisition to their ranks she had
no sort of objection to her joining them.

The good sister replied that Miss Gemmell had not a grain of the stuff
of which nuns are made, that her leanings were all in a worldly
direction.

"No hope in that quarter!" laughed I, but Belle chided me for making fun
of