ll the pleasure of it.
Ask Mrs. Freddy Allen; she is young, and likes to go everywhere, and
Freddy will go along and make another gentleman."

"That will do nicely if you really don't want to go, mamma. We'll invite
them all as we come out of church, and save the bother of writing notes.
It's easier to explain when you see people than to write down
everything."

"Yes, that's one of the conveniences of going to church," remarked Mrs.
Joy, calmly. "I've often had as many as three or four invitations,
coming out of Trinity on a Sunday morning in the season. These muffins
are horrid. James, tell the cook she ought to be ashamed of herself to
send up such things. They're as tough as leather, and burned besides--as
black as my shoe, I do declare."

"Yes, 'm."

And James departed to incense the cook with the unsoftened message. The
cook declared that when ladies came down an hour late for breakfast,
they must expect tough muffins; and for her part she didn't care whether
they were good or not; she didn't think much of the place anyway, and
didn't mean to stay on. There'd be plenty of people coming in a week or
two, and plenty of places to pick and choose from. Mrs. Joy was always
having little difficulties with her servants.

Trinity Church looked cool and shady, as the party entered it from the
dazzle of the outer sunshine. Berenice Joy was perfectly well-trained in
the outward forms of devotion. She called herself "High Church;" and
nothing could be more graceful than the manner in which she glided up
the aisle, bowed to the chancel, and sank on her knees, for what was
supposed to be a short interval of silent prayer. But her eyes went
straight to the Grays' pew the moment she rose, and from thence to the
Halletts', and she whispered to Ethel, "They're all here. That's nice."
Then she indulged in a long stare at Candace, who had come to church
with her cousins, and who, in her new cream-and-brown foulard, with the
daisy-trimmed hat, and a pair of the birthday gloves on her slender
hands, looked quite differently from the ill-dressed little passenger of
the "Eolus" the Monday before.

"Do look! That's the very girl we saw on the boat," went on Berenice, in
the same low whisper. "Did you ever! Hasn't Mrs. Gray done her over
nicely? I wonder where she got that hat?"

"I wonder what she has done with the old one?"

"Given it to the cook, or sold it to the rag-and-bottle man," retorted
Berry. Then came a suppressed gigg