ample of yellow silk."

Porter, coming up, was treated to a repetition of this remark.

"Let us thank the Gods that it isn't red," was his fervent response.

Grace's hands went up to her own lovely hair.

"Oh," she reproached him.

Porter apologized. "I was thinking of my carroty head. Yours is
glorious."

"Artists paint it," Grace agreed pensively, "and it goes well with the
right kind of clothes."

Delilah looked from one to the other.

"You two would make a beautiful pair of saints on a stained glass
window," she said reflectively, "with a spike of lilies and halos back
of your heads."

"Most women are ready for halos," Porter said, "and wings, but I can't
see myself balancing a spike of lilies."

"Nor I," Grace rippled; "you'd better make it hollyhocks, Delilah--do
you know the old rhyme

"'A beau never goes
Where the hollyhock blows'?"

"You've never lacked men in your life," Delilah told her, shrewdly,
"but with that hair you won't be one of the comfortable married
kind--it will be either a _grande passion_ or a career for you. If you
don't find your Romeo, you'll be Mother Superior in a convent, the head
of a deaconess home, or a nurse on a battle-field."

Grace's eyes sparkled. "Oh, wise Delilah, you haven't drifted so very
far away from my dreams. Where did you get your wisdom?"

"I'm learning things from Colin Quale. We study types together. It's
great fun for me, but he's perfectly serious."

Colin Quale was Delilah's artist. "Why didn't you bring him?"
Constance asked.

"Because he doesn't belong in this family group; and anyhow I had
something for him to do. He's making a sketch of the gown I am to wear
at the White House garden party. It will keep him busy for the
afternoon."

"Delilah," Leila looked up from her worship of Mary-Constance, "I don't
believe you ever see in people anything but the way they look."

"I don't, duckie. To me--you are a sort of family art gallery. I hang
you up in my mind, and you make a rather nice little collection."

Barry, coming in, caught up her words, with something of his old
vivacity.

"The baby belongs to the Dutch school--with that nose."

There was a chorus of protest.

"She looks like you," Delilah told him. "Except for her nose, she's a
Ballard. There's nothing of her father in her, except her beautiful
disposition."

She flashed a challenging glance at Gordon. He stiffened. Such women
as Delilah Jeliffe might hav