r for Sylvia's statement that, yes, lately Father had begun to give
her lessons on the piano. With the smoothly working imagination coming
from a lifetime of devotion to the subject, Mrs. Hubert was stripping
off Sylvia's trite little blue coat and uninteresting dark hat, and
was arraying her in scarlet serge with a green velvet collar--"with
those eyes and that coloring she could carry off striking 'color
combinations--and a big white felt hat with a soft pompon of silk
on one side--no, a long, stiff, scarlet quill would suit her style
better. Then, with white stockings and shoes and gloves--or perhaps
pearl-gray would be better. Yes, with low-cut suede shoes, fastening
with two big smoked-pearl buttons." She looked down with pitying eyes
at Sylvia's sturdy, heavy-soled shoes which could not conceal the
slender, shapely feet within them--"but, what on earth was the child
saying?--"

"--every Sunday evening--it's beautiful, and now I'm getting so big I
can help some. I can turn over the pages for them in hard places,
and when old Mr. Reinhardt has had too much to drink and his hands
tremble, he lets me unfasten his violin-case and tighten up his bow
and--"

Mrs. Hubert cried out, "Your parents don't let you have anything to do
with that old, drunken Reinhardt!"

Sylvia was smitten into silence by the other's horrified tone and
hung her head miserably, only murmuring, after a pause, in damning
extenuation, "He's never so _very_ drunk!"

"Well, upon my word!" exclaimed Mrs. Hubert, in a widely spaced,
emphatic phrase of condemnation. To her sister she added, "It's really
not exaggeration then, what one hears about their home life." One of
her daughters, a child about Sylvia's age, turned a candid, blank
little face up to hers, "Mother, what is a drunken reinhardt?" she
asked in a thin little pipe.

Mrs. Hubert frowned, shook her head, and said in a tone of dark
mystery: "Never mind, darling, don't think about it. It's something
that nice little girls shouldn't know anything about. Come, Margery;
come, Eleanor." She took their hands and began to draw them away
without another look at Sylvia, who remained behind, drooping,
ostracised, pierced momentarily with her first blighting misgiving
about the order of things she had always known.

CHAPTER III

BROTHER AND SISTER

A fuller initiation into the kaleidoscopic divergencies of adult
standards was given Sylvia during the visits of her Aunt Victoria.
These