how
she could have done it--I would have died first. And she seemed to think
it was a great joke to have her friends give her a dinner--I think it
was terrible."

"Why, Aunt Jule, how ridiculous! We were delighted to do it--it was
perfectly dear of her to let us, too. And think of the people we met
there--Rawlins and Mr. Ware! You don't mind being poor if such men will
come just out of interest in you, I tell you. Do you remember, Elise,
how Mr. Rawlins called her 'little girl'? Mr. Ware lets her use his
models whenever she likes, too," Carolyn added respectfully.

"Oh, she's bound to arrive!" Elise agreed.

Aunt Ju-ju sniffed uncontrolledly.

"I should hope she'd arrive at the point where she could buy her own
dinners," she remarked. "To be beholden for your bread"...

Here were two points of view as little likely to coincide as the
parallel lines of science, and at some such stage as this the
discussions were wont to cease.

To-day the apartment was swept and garnished for a social function
long planned by the nieces. Carnations leaned from tall glass vases,
intricate little cakes jostled carefully piled sandwiches, and a huge
brass samovar, borrowed for the occasion, gave dignity to the small
parlor. Miss Trueman had learned by now the unwritten law that prevented
the various objects in the once proudly segregated "drawing-room set"
from association with each other, and made no attempt to correct their
intentional isolation. The samovar she refused utterly to meddle with,
assuring them that she would as soon think of running a locomotive.

As the guests began to arrive Miss Trueman found herself regarding them
even more critically than usual; an argumentative spirit rose in her,
and her calm contradiction of Mrs. Ranger, who discussed with great
subtlety the notable advantages--even from the artistic point of
view--of the approaching spring when experienced in the city, in
comparison with that be-rhymed season's vaunted country beauties,
startled more than one person.

"Just because they're more delicate, just because you must look harder
to discover them, just because you must get as much from a pot of
hyacinths on the Avenue as from a whole field of primroses in the
backwoods, you know," she concluded, and the little circle nodded sagely
and congratulated themselves on an unpublished paragraph.

"I don't agree with you, Mrs. Ranger," said Aunt Ju-ju flatly, to the
absolute amazement of her nieces and the