t off. It's an artist gives
this party. I sit to artists sometimes, Sundays, for my hair. I guess
you offen seen it on covers o' magazines. This artist friend o' mine's
the best o' the whole bunch."

"Man or woman?" Win wanted to know.

She expected the answer to be "man," but Lily did not seem to hear.
Her face looked dreamy.

"It's the loveliest house where the party'll be," she said. "'Tain't
the artist's own. It's some relation's that's lent it for the summer
while they're away at the seashore. I bin there. It's in the Fifties,
just off Fift' Av'noo. Tonight it'll be cool as snow, and
everything'll be iced for supper. Iced consummay, chicken salad cold
as the refrigerator, iced champagne cup flowin' like water; ice-cream
and strawb'ries, the big, sweet, red ones from up north, where they
keep on growin' all summer, and lilies and roses from the country to
give away to us when we go home."

Win forgot the question that had not been answered. She seemed to see
those strawberries and to smell the sweetness of roses and lilies in a
house "as cool as snow."

"Heavenly!" she sighed. "I didn't remember there were such things in
the world!"

"Well, come with me to-night and remind yourself," coaxed Miss
Leavitt. "You needn't be afraid, because I said it was artists, to
butt into some rowdy crowd. They'll be as quiet and refined as mice.
They're more your kind than mine, I guess."

"But who invites me?" Win made another bid for information.

"My artist friend said I could bring any one I wanted to bring, and I
want to bring you. I don't just know who all'll be there, but I guess
not many, and it's a real swell house to see. You always refuse
everything I ask you to, but I do think you might say yes this one
time and show you're not proud and stuck up. It'd do you good!"

"I believe it would, and I'll go!" cried Win. She was in the mood to
say "yes" to anything.

"Hully gee! That's the best thing's happened to me since the measles!"
exclaimed Miss Leavitt jovially. "I'll call for you at your place
half-past nine this evening, so you can have a good rest before you
begin fixin' yourself up."

"It's an engagement," said Win, with a kind of self-defiance.

She had wished for a change, "anything for a change," and presto! her
wish had been suddenly granted by fate. Rather spitefully granted, it
would seem, because to go to a "party" with Lily Leavitt was the very
last thing she would have chosen. And spitefully, a