al and captivated attention. Now they were loath to
let her go; pressing about, tarrying amid the teacups, and only
reluctantly faring forth as the maids appeared to remove the wreckage
of the feast. The hostess sank, weary but elated, into a chair by Miss
Clymer, the secretary, as the last silken skirt rustled away. Mrs.
Waite, the president, who was dallying with socialism, had evidently
introduced her new pet to the visitor, who listened politely.

"After all," suggested Mrs. Clymer, more from the amiable design of
steering the conversation within safe limits than out of any craving to
exploit her own views, "after all, do we really know _how_ these people
feel? Is there one of us, for example, who ever had an intimate friend
among them, a woman who worked with her hands?"

"Madelaide Dunbar told me once," remarked the youngest club member,
"that she was fonder of her maid than of most of her friends."

"Which maid?" inquired another. "The one who took her pearl necklace?"

"Nobody took those pearls; Madelaide hid them herself, and forgot all
about it, and then found them in her soiled-handkerchief bag! But it
wasn't that one. This one had a little wave to her nose and her eyes
were near together."

"Is she with Madelaide now?"

"I think she married. Madelaide was buying teaspoons the other day, and
asking for rather light weight--maybe they were for her wedding
present."

The South Carolinian smothered a smile. "Madelaide doesn't exactly
count," said the hostess.

A new voice took up the theme, a sweet, rather diffident voice, to
which, nevertheless, the circle listened with an attention that was
almost distinction. She who spoke had been born in the little
mid-Western city, and there she had spent her early youth, but she had
married a rich man of the East, and was only a visitor to-day. The
Ridgelys were people of importance; and Constance Ridgely, the only
child, who never went to parties with boys, and only paid visits with
her mother, and finally disappeared into vistas of fashion and intimacy
with the peerage, was a person of mark. The more, that no splendid
transformation had altered her affection for the town, or her gentle,
almost shy modesty of manner. She flushed slightly now as she spoke.
"The best, the dearest girl friend I ever had, used to work with her
hands," said she.

The sudden silence was almost the dumbness of dismay; but the hostess
sprang nimbly to the rescue with a murmur of "How