by the Ponsonbys', the first
place on the south, and gradually work their way up to the Jenks-Smiths',
where the rose garden and an elaborate refreshment booth will be reached.
The Latham garden is too new to make any showing, but Mrs. Latham, who
has been much in New York of late, promises something novel in the way of
a tea room in her great reception hall, while Mrs. Jenks-Smith insisted
that Sylvia should have charge of her rose booth, saying: "Your name's
suitable for the business, you'll look well in a simple hat and baggy
mull gown, such as artists always want to put on the people they paint,
and I must positively have some one who'll stay by me and see that things
are not torn to bits, for all the rest of the girls will slide off with
the first pair of trousers that comes along. Anyway, you don't match the
little Ponsonby and Chatfield minxes that your mother has chosen for her
six Geisha girls, for you are a head taller than the bunch."

Nothing is talked of now but this fete. Of course it will help the
hospital, even though ten times the amount is being spent upon the
preparation than any sum that can possibly be made for the charity; but
it pleases the people to spend. Father says that the Whirlpoolers are
already bored; that they have used up the place, for the time being, and
if it were not for this festival, the Bluffs would be deserted for
Newport and Long Island long before July.

Social ambition has even infected our rector's jolly little wife, who has
never felt able or called upon to entertain in any but the most informal
way. After hearing the report of a clerical luncheon in New York, where
the clergyman sat at the foot of his own table with a miniature
shepherd's crook before him, and the favour beside the plate of each
female guest consisted of a woolly lamb, she, not to be outdone,
immediately imperilled the possibility of a new winter gown by inviting
all the non-resident members of the congregation to lunch, and serving
the ice cream in a toy Noah's Ark, while the animals from it were grouped
about a large dish of water, to form an appropriate decoration in the
centre of the table, and sugar doves at each plate held leaves in their
mouths, upon which the name of the guest was neatly pricked with a pin.

* * * * *

Lavinia Dorman has decided to stay with me and do without her maid,
rather than take a cottage, or board, for we find that we do not wear on
each ot