rious experience in the contrasts of life for a girl
to see herself from the family point of view, after catching the
rose-colored reflections which the admiration of an outsider throws
upon her character.

CHAPTER XVII

A LITTLE DINNER

"Wreathe the bowl with flowers of soul."

The suppressed excitement of the afternoon lent an added flush and
sparkle to Winifred's face as she entered the study where her father
and Miss Standish were playing chess together after the family dinner.
Self-absorbed as she was at the moment, she found leisure to be struck
with the picture of the two sitting there; her father's head, with its
austere profile outlined against the green curtain, which cast
softened reflections over his white hair, and Miss Standish, crisp and
dainty as a sprig of dried lavender, her gray curls quivering with the
excitement, and her white hands hovering anxiously over rooks and
pawns.

Miss Standish looked up as Winifred came in, radiant in her new
evening gown, for she was to dine with the Hartington Grahams, who had
recently returned from England and opened their town house for the
season.

"I thought it was to be a _little_ dinner," said Miss Standish,
looking with some disapproval at the bare shoulders rising above the
billowy ruffles of rose-colored chiffon.

"It is--'just a small affair,' Mrs. Graham wrote me. Besides, it is
too early in the season for anything formal. In fact, she would hardly
ask her most fashionable friends at this time of year. But she must
get round somehow," Winifred finished with a little laugh.

"In Boston," said Miss Standish, "you would be overdoing it to wear
that kind of a gown to such an affair, but here people seem to have no
sense of gradation. They take literally Longfellow's advice to the
young poet seeking success: 'Do your best every time.'"

"I don't see," said Winifred, "why the advice is not just as good for
dress as for poetry,--except that gowns wear out and poems don't. Is
the carriage there, McGregor, and Maria ready? Well, good-night, Papa;
look out for your queen, and don't let Miss Standish checkmate you
with any of her Boston tricks!"

"I think," Jimmy called out after her from the corner of the big sofa,
where he lay curled up like a dormouse, "if you would do your best on
_my_ dress, instead of making me wear this old suit, it would strike a
better average in the fam