lives. He says it is all
very well to talk of high ideals, you can't live up to them, the best
you can do is to live up to the highest practical ideal. But then his
standard of ideal is very much higher since he saw Pauline for the first
time. Pauline blushed when a strange man walked into the room, which was
all for the best, and made the day a happier one for me. Not that Dick
Dudley was not very loyal to me. He tried, I could see it was an effort
not to talk too much to Pauline, although the topic of bearing-reins,
under certain circumstances, was a very engrossing one, and spaniels a
never-ending one. Pauline expressed her surprise that Mr. Dudley should
ask her if she lived in London.

"I thought every one could see I lived in the country," she said. "Did
you mean it for a compliment?" she asked kindly.

Dick Dudley was a little overcome by this, and he said he would hardly
have dared to pay her a compliment, since every one knew that girls who
lived in the country away from bearing-reins and other hardening and
worldly influences, and in close proximity to spaniels, black, liver and
white, cocker, clumber, and otherwise, were so vastly superior to their
London sisters. Here Dick got a little deep and Pauline kindly rescued
him.

"A compliment to my clothes, I meant," she said; "because all my friends
in London tell me my clothes are so countrified."

Dick listened very, very seriously to the reasons why Pauline was
obliged to have most of her clothes made in the country, and I could see
that every moment he thought less of the importance of clothes and
their makers, and more and more of the qualities essential in woman,
simplicity, goodness, frankness, and an absence of artificiality. I saw
it all on his face, dawning slowly and surely. By the time we had had
tea, I could see it was a matter of mutual satisfaction to both Dick and
Pauline to find that they were going to the same dance that night. The
responsibility of chaperoning Pauline was not mine.

My anxiety as to the ball dress emerging from the small box was relieved
by Pauline telling me that it was to come from the dressmaker just
in time for her to dress for the ball; which it did. She came to be
inspected by Nannie and me before she started, and she really looked
delicious. Her assets as a country girl counted heavily that night, she
looked so fresh, so natural, and so full of the joy of living. Her hair
counted, every hair of it. Nannie was so tou