riotically considered her as Columbia, with the customary
drapery of stars and stripes and the cap of liberty. But while holding
that she would have looked very pretty in the dress, Mrs. Elmore decided
that it would have been too hackneyed; and besides, everybody would have
known instantly who it was.

"Why not have had her go in the character of Mr. Hoskins's 'Westward'?"
suggested Elmore, with lazy irony.

"The very thing!" cried his wife. "Owen, you deserve great credit for
thinking of that; no one else would have done it! No one will dream what
it means, and it will be great fun, letting them make it out. We must
keep it a dead secret from Mr. Hoskins, and let her surprise him with it
when he comes for her that evening. It will be a very pretty way of
returning his compliment, and it will be a sort of delicate
acknowledgement of his kindness in asking her, and in so many other
ways. Yes, you've hit it exactly, Owen; she shall go as 'Westward.'"

"Go?" echoed Elmore, who had with difficulty realized the rapid change
of tense. "I thought you said you couldn't get her ready."

"We must manage somehow," replied Mrs. Elmore. And somehow a shoemaker
for the sandals, a seamstress for the delicate flowing draperies, a
hair-dresser for the adjustment of the young girl's rebellious abundance
of hair beneath the star-lit fillet, were actually found,--with the help
of Hoskins, as usual, though he was not suffered to know anything of the
character to whose make-up he contributed. The perruquier, a personage
of lordly address naturally, and of a dignity heightened by the demand
in which he found himself came early in the morning, and was received by
Elmore with a self-possession that ill-comported with the solemnity of
the occasion. "Sit down," said Elmore easily, pushing him a chair. "The
ladies will be here presently."

"But I have no time to sit down, signore!" replied the artist, with an
imperious bow, "and the ladies must be here instantly."

Mrs. Elmore always said that if she had not heard this conversation, and
hurried in at once, the perruquier would have left them at that point.
But she contrived to appease him by the manifestation of an intelligent
sympathy; she made Lily leave her breakfast untasted, and submit her
beautiful head to the touch of this man, with whom it was but a head of
hair and nothing more; and in an hour the work was done. The artist
whisked away the cloth which covered her shoulders, and cryin