Nearly half past
five, and you haven't started to dress. Your father will be so annoyed
if you are not ready when he arrives."

Mrs. Carleton, a small, fair woman, with a rather worried, fretful
expression, paused in the doorway of her daughter's room, and regarded
the delinquent with anxiety not unmixed with dismay. Elsie, arrayed in a
pink kimono, was lying comfortably on the sofa, deep in the pages of an
interesting story-book. At her mother's words she threw down her book,
and rose with a yawn. She was a tall girl with dark eyes and hair, and
she would have been decidedly pretty if she too had not looked rather
cross.

"Is it really so late?" she said, indifferently. "Why didn't Hortense
call me? I had no idea what time it was."

"But you ought to have known, dear," Mrs. Carleton protested gently. "I
don't suppose Hortense knew you wanted to be called, but I will ring
for her at once. You will hurry, won't you, darling? What excuse can I
possibly make to your father if he asks for you and finds you are not
ready?"

"Oh, don't worry, Mamma. You know papa only scolds because he thinks it
his duty; he doesn't really care. Besides, the train will probably be
late; those Western trains always are."

Mrs. Carleton rang the bell for the maid, whose room was in a different
part of the hotel, and went to the closet in quest of her daughter's
evening dress.

"I will help you till Hortense comes," she said. "You really must hurry,
Elsie. It is not as if your father were coming alone; he will expect you
to be ready to greet Marjorie."

Elsie shrugged her shoulders indifferently.

"As if a girl who has been living on a cattle ranch in Arizona would
care whether I were dressed or not," she said. "Probably where she comes
from people wear kimonos all day long, and never even heard of dressing
for the evening."

Mrs. Carleton sighed, and the worried expression deepened in her blue
eyes.

"I really wish, darling, that you would try to be a little more gracious
about this. Of course it is a trial, but your father has made up his
mind that Marjorie shall spend the winter with us, and it isn't going to
make things any pleasanter to be constantly finding fault about them."

"I wasn't finding fault," retorted Elsie, who had by this time taken off
the kimono, and begun brushing out her long hair. "I only said Marjorie
Graham wouldn't care a fig what I had on, and I don't believe she will.
I don't intend to be disagreeable