ake. She heard Miss Elton's cheerful address of the appalling
personage with the puffed up bit of hair and the saucy cap.

"How do you do, Sophie?"

"Good day, mees. As thar anything Ay can do for you?"

"I fancy my dress would be better for a good brushing after the dusty
train, and the gown I want is in the top tray of the little trunk,
Sophie."

The door closed and Lena wondered in terror what of her small store of
finery she ought to put on, and when she ought to go down stairs. She
solved the first question to the best of her ability and sat down on the
edge of a very clean beflowered chair in despair about the other, when
there came voices in the hall, and Madeline tapped on her door, and
called:

"Don't you want to come out and see the baby?"

Now Lena detested babies as sticky and order-destroying vermin, but in
relief she said: "A baby? Oh, how lovely!"

"Come," said Mrs. Lenox. "The proper study of womanhood is baby." Lena
went out to find a very small person in a very tottering condition,
steered up and down the hall by another be-capped maid who was holding
tight to his rear petticoats, while Mrs. Lenox trotted by his side,
pulling a woolly lamb that baa'd with enchanting precision, and allowing
her skirts to be worried by a small puppy, whose business in life was to
bite anything hard that lay on the floor or that wiggled. Mrs. Lenox and
Miss Elton sat down on the floor to towsle and to be towsled amid
laughter and hair-pulling and frantic yelps from the puppy, while Lena
looked on and said: "Isn't he cunning?" and wondered whether she ought
to sit on the floor or not. She wondered if this were indeed the
millionaire Mrs. Lenox of whom she read with awe from the "In the swing"
column as being present at such and such "society functions", thus and
thus attired.

Somehow Mrs. Lenox, seated on the floor, with her hair over one eye,
disconcerted Lena more than any amount of grandeur would have done. She
felt as one might who should catch the Venus of Melos cutting capers.
Then the redoubtable lady jumped up, tucked in a few hair-pins, gave a
final shake to her small son and said:

"I dressed little Frank myself this afternoon. Don't you think I did a
good job? Dressing a baby combines all the pleasures of the chase with
the requirements of the exact sciences, Miss Quincy. Now let's go down
and have some tea before big Frank gets home. I think we've time for a
little friendly chat."

This time Lena