ned it into such loveliness--"

"You've missed your trolley-car," said her mother succinctly.

"Oh, I'm _sorry_!" cried Lydia, in a remorse evidently directed more
toward displeasing her mother than the other consequences of her delay,
for she asked in a moment, very meekly, "Will it make so very much
difference if I don't go till the next one?"

"You'll miss the Governor. He was coming down to meet those on this car.
You'll have to go all alone. All the rest of the party were on this
one."

"Oh, I don't care about that," cried Lydia. "If that's all--I'd ever so
much rather go alone. I'm never alone a single minute, and it'll rest
me. The crowd would have been so noisy and carried on so--they always
do."

Her mother's aggrieved disappointment did not disappear. She said
nothing, bringing Lydia's traveling wraps to her silently, and emanating
disapproval until Lydia drooped and looked piteously at her godfather.

Dr. Melton cried out at this, "Look here, Susan Emery, you're like the
carpenter that was so proud of his good planing that he planed his
boards all away to shavings."

Mrs. Emery looked at him with a lack of comprehension of his meaning
equaled only by her evident indifference to it.

"I mean--I thought what you were going in for was giving Lydia a good
time this winter. You're running her as though she were a
transcontinental railway system."

"You can't accomplish anything without system in this world," said Mrs.
Emery. She added, "Perhaps Lydia will find, when she comes to ordering
her own life, that she will miss her old mother's forethought and care."

Lydia flung herself remorsefully on her mother's neck. "I'm so _sorry_,
Mother dear," she almost sobbed. Dr. Melton's professional eye took in
the fact that everyone in the room was high-strung and tense. "The
middle-of-the-social-season symptom," he called it to himself. "I'm so
sorry, Mother," Lydia went on. "I will be more careful next time. You
are _so_ good to--to--"

"Good Heavens!" said Dr. Melton. "All the child did was to give herself
a moment's time to look at a fine spectacle, after spending all a
precious afternoon on such a tragically idiotic pursuit as cards."

"Oh, _sunsets_!" Mrs. Emery disposed of them with a word. "Come, Lydia."

"I'll go with her, and carry her bag," said the doctor.

"You made such a good job of getting her here on time," said Mrs. Emery,
unappeased.

The Judge offered to go, as a means of one of his rar