y eyes--but you're a slick trio, girls. Pale
lavender, pale blue, and pale pink, and all quite sophisticatedly
decollete. You go with the decorations, too. I don't know quite why
you do, but you do."

"Give honor where honor is due, dearie. That's owing to the cleverness
of the decorator," David said.

"No man calls me dearie and lives to tell the tale," Jimmie remarked
almost dreamily as he squared off. "How'll you have it, Dave?"

But at that instant there was an unexpected interruption. Alphonse
threw open the big entrance door at the farther end of the long room
with a flourish.

"Mademoiselle Juliet Capulet," he proclaimed with the grand air, and
then retired behind his hand, smiling broadly.

Framed in the high doorway, complete, cap and curls, softly rounding
bodice, and the long, straight lines of the Renaissance, stood
Juliet--Juliet, immemorial, immortal, young--austerely innocent and
delicately shy, already beautiful, and yet potential of all the beauty
and the wisdom of the world.

"I've never worn these clothes before anybody but the girls before,"
Eleanor said, "but I thought"--she looked about her appealingly--"you
might like it--for a surprise."

"Great jumping Jehoshaphat," Jimmie exclaimed, "I thought you said she
was the same little girl, David."

"She was half an hour ago," David answered, "I never saw such a
metamorphosis. In fact, I don't think I ever saw Juliet before."

"She is the thing itself," Gertrude answered, the artist in her
sobered by the vision.

But Peter passed a dazed hand over his eyes and stared at the delicate
figure advancing to him.

"My God! she's a woman," he said, and drew the hard breath of a man
just awakened from sleep.

[Illustration: "I thought"--she looked about her appealingly--"you might
like it--for a surprise"]

CHAPTER XV

GROWING UP

"Dear Uncle Jimmie:

"It was a pleasant surprise to get letters from every one of my uncles
the first week I got back to school. It was unprecedented. You wrote
me two letters last year, Uncle David six, and Uncle Peter sixteen. He
is the best correspondent, but perhaps that is because I ask him the
most advice. The Christmas party was lovely. I shall never forget the
expressions on all the different faces when I came down in my Juliet
suit. I thought at first that no one liked me in it, but I guess they
did.

"You know how well I liked my presents because you heard my wild
exclamations of delight. I n