y with me, you and
Jacqueline? Hasn't your mother been enough for you, my darling?"

Jemima submitted to the embrace with a certain distaste. "Of course.
Don't be a goose, Mother dear! There'll never be any place I love as
well as Storm--" (Kate winced again)--"or anybody I love as well as you.
But we've our position in the world to think of, we Kildares," she
ended, with the stateliness of a duchess.

"The world? Kentucky's a very small part of the world, dear."

"It happens to be the part we live in," said Jemima, unanswerably. "And
ever since there was a Kentucky, there have been Kildares at the top of
it. I do wish," she freed herself gently, "that you wouldn't always feel
like embracing me when I've just done my hair! You're as bad as Jacky."

"Forgive me," said Kate humbly, releasing her. "So you can't be happy
without 'society,' Jemmy? Parties don't always mean pleasure, my little
girl."

"I know that--" Jemima spoke soberly. "I don't believe I'm going to have
a very good time at parties. Jacqueline is. I don't know why--" her
voice was quite impersonal. "I'm prettier than she is, really, and lots
cleverer, but Jacky gets all the beaux. Even that author man, though
you'd think.... Queer, isn't it?" She put her wistful question again:
"Mother, do you think it pays to be clever?"

Kate, with a pang at the heart for this clear-eyed child of hers,
answered as best she could this plaint of clever women since the world
began. "Certainly it pays. Clever people usually get what they want."

"They get it, yes," mused the girl. "But it doesn't seem to come of its
own accord. And things are nicer if they come of their own accord." She
gave a faint sigh. "However, we must do what we can. And of course
people don't go to parties, or give them, just to have a good time."

"No?" murmured Kate. "Why, then?"

"To make friends," explained the girl, patiently. "You see Jacky and I
have to make our own friends."

Kate's eyes smote her suddenly with compunction, and she leaned her head
against her mother's arm, quite impulsively for Jemima. "Not that I'm
blaming you, Mummy. You've done the best you know how for us, and this
is going to be my affair. It's all quite right for you to be a hermit,
if you like. You're a widow, you've had your life. But Jacky and I
aren't widows, and if we keep on this way, we'll never have a chance to
be."

She was surprised by her mother's sudden chuckle. Jemima was never
intentionally amusi