ne of the outstretched hands with rather
extraordinary limpness. She murmured something altogether
indistinguishable.

Arethusa's cordiality felt somewhat thrown back upon herself. She sat
down abruptly in the nearest chair. Miss Warren resumed her place on
the sofa. There was a long silence, while the visitor covertly studied
her hostess, and the hostess openly observed the details of her
visitor's appearance with the frankest interest.

Arethusa thought Miss Warren was very pretty. She had coal black hair,
although very little of it showed from under her hat, bright black
eyes, and a wonderfully white skin with a great deal of color in her
lips and cheeks.

But it was her clothes that really most intensely interested the
clothes-loving Arethusa.

For Miss Warren was exceedingly well-dressed in garments that could but
excite admiration. She wore silky furs as black as her hair, soft and
long and smoothly shining. Arethusa had a childish longing to stroke
them. Miss Warren's suit was made of a marvelous sort of stuff unlike
any material Arethusa had ever seen, dark wine in color, and it spelled
"Paris" in every well-cut line. The blouse she wore was a superlative
affair of lace and delicacy and tracings of fine embroidery. It could
never have been called a "shirtwaist," as Arethusa's plain garments of
the same shape with their simple rows of tucking were named. From one
daintily gloved hand she dangled a gold purse, and several other small
articles of the same metal of an unknown variety.

Arethusa's glance traveled downward, still admiring, and there it
paused. For it was hard in the first glimpse to determine just where
Miss Warren's feet could be, in those long narrow shoes, with the ends
just like pointed pencils. It did not seem possible that human toes, of
the number of five, could fit into one of those shoes. Arethusa looked
suddenly at her own feet, and as Miss Warren's eyes were at that moment
upon them also, they seemed to Arethusa to appear very large, and very
awkward to have as feet, in her comfortable house slippers with the
broad, round toes. She tucked them as far under her chair as she could,
and felt a little hot. Miss Eliza had selected those slippers, as a
special privilege of an extra pair of shoes for the Visit. But they
were a half-size larger than Arethusa ordinarily wore, because they had
been the only pair obtainable at Tobin's, in Blue Spring. She had never
minded this fact before, but b