at she said of
course she couldn't go. She didn't know what she'd been thinking of. The
number of things imperatively to be done or seen to in preparation for
the party to-night would keep her busy all the afternoon.

Then Mary followed suit. If this was really going to be a party--she
hadn't quite got this idea before--she'd have to spend the afternoon
unpacking and putting her frocks in order or she wouldn't have
anything to wear.

"Well," Paula said comfortably, "until they turn me on like a Victrola at
nine o'clock or so, I've nothing to do with the party except not think
about it." She made this observation at large, then turned on Rush.
"You'll come with me, won't you, and keep me from getting frightened
until tea-time?"

Rush would go--rather!--but he laughed at the word "frightened."

"I'm not joking," she said, and reaching out she covered his hand, which
rested on the cloth, with one of hers.

He flushed instantly at that; then said to the others with slightly
elaborated surprise, "It _is,_ cold, for a fact."

"So is the other one," said Paula. "For that matter, so are my feet. And
getting colder every minute. Come along or we'll be late."

Mary branded this as a bit of rather crude coquetry. It wasn't
conceivable that a professional opera singer of Paula's experience could
look forward with any sort of emotion to the mere singing of a few songs
to a group of familiar friends. It occurred to her, too, that Paula had
calculated on her refusal to go to the matinee as definitely as on Aunt
Lucile's and for a moment she indulged the idea of changing her mind and
going along with them just to frustrate this design. Only, of course, it
wouldn't work that way. She couldn't keep Rush from being taken away from
her by playing the spoil-sport. She couldn't keep him anyhow she
supposed. She made a hasty, rather forlorn retreat to her own room as
soon as the departing pair were safely out of the house.

That room of hers exerted now a rather curious effect upon her mood. It
had been hers ever since her promotion from the nursery and it, like
her brother's adjoining, had been kept unchanged, unoccupied during her
long absence.

The furniture and the decoration of it had been her mother's last
Christmas present. The first Mrs. Wollaston had lived under the influence
of the late Victorian esthetes, and Mary's room looked as if it had been
designed for Elaine the lily maid of Astolat, an effect which was
heightened