ipe her eyes.

In the matter of Fanny, and in a dozen other small matters, the
independence of the great lady was not slow in showing itself in Mrs.
Burgoyne. Santa Paloma might be annoyed at her, and puzzled by her, but
it had perforce to accept her as she stood, or ignore her, and she was
obviously not a person to ignore. She declined all invitations for
daytime festivities; she was "always busy in the daytime," she said. No
cards, no luncheons, no tea-parties could lure her away from the Hall,
although, if she and the small girls walked in for mail or were down in
the village for any other reason, they were very apt to stop somewhere
for a chat on their way home. But the children were allowed to go
nowhere alone, and not the smartest of children's parties could boast
of the presence of Joanna and Ellen Burgoyne.

Santa Paloma children were much given to parties, or rather their
parents were; and every separate party was a separate great event. The
little girls wore exquisite hand-made garments, silken hose and white
shoes. Professional entertainers, in fashionably darkened rooms, kept
the little people amused, and professional caterers supplied the supper
they ate, or perhaps the affair took the shape of a box-party for a
matinee, and a supper at the town's one really pretty tea-room
followed. These affairs were duly chronicled in the daily and weekly
papers, and perhaps more than one matron would have liked the
distinction of having Mrs. Burgoyne's little daughters listed among her
own child's guests. Joanna and Ellen were pretty children, in a
well-groomed, bright-eyed sort of way, and would have been popular even
without the added distinction of their ready French and German and
Italian, their charming manners, their naive references to other
countries and peoples, and their beautiful and distinguished mother.

But in answer to all invitations, there came only polite, stilted
little letters of regret, in the children's round script. "Mother would
d'rather we shouldn't go to a sin-gul party until we are young ladies!"
Ellen would say cheerfully, if cross-examined on the subject, leaving
it to the more tactful Joanna to add, "But Mother thanks you JUST as
much." They were always close to their mother when it was possible, and
she only banished them from her side when the conversation grew
undeniably too old in tone for Joanna and Ellen, and then liked to keep
them in sight, have them come in with the tea-tray, or