with some scorn;
"it won't take me half an hour."

The next day was Thanksgiving, and the Carletons and their niece were
invited to a family dinner at Mrs. Lamont's. Elsie spent a long time in
her room that afternoon, and came out looking rather cross. Marjorie,
going into her cousin's room for something later in the day, noticed
that the waste-paper basket was full of torn papers.

"I wonder if she can be having trouble with her poem," Marjorie thought
innocently, but when she questioned Elsie on the subject, that young
lady colored angrily, and replied that of course she wasn't, and she did
wish people would stop talking about that silly Club; she was sick of
the subject and had a great mind not to join at all.

The dinner at the Lamonts was very pleasant, and Marjorie could not help
being conscious of the fact that she looked unusually well in her new
dress. Every one was kind to the little Western girl, and she liked Mrs.
Lamont and her daughter better than ever. The Ward family were also of
the party, and Marjorie was introduced to the Yale boy, Percy, whom she
found most agreeable, though not, as she wrote her mother afterward,
quite so nice as Beverly Randolph.

"Why didn't you tell me what a jolly girl Marjorie Graham was?" Percy
demanded of Elsie, when the cousins were alone together for a moment
after dinner.

Elsie flushed.

"I didn't know you'd like her," she said, evasively. "She's dreadfully
young for her age, and not a bit like the New York girls."

"Well, she's all right anyway," maintained Percy. "I only wish I'd known
about her in time to get another ticket for the game last Saturday. But
she went with some other friends, didn't she?"

"Oh, yes, she went," said Elsie, with a rather sarcastic smile. "She got
some people at the hotel to take her in their car. You needn't worry
about Marjorie; she knows how to take care of herself."

Elsie spent another hour in her room on Friday morning, and was so cross
and disagreeable at luncheon, that Marjorie wondered more and more what
the matter could possibly be. But in the afternoon Elsie cheered up, and
her cousin came to the conclusion that whatever the trouble had been, it
was evidently over.

The meeting was to begin at eight o'clock, so immediately after an early
dinner, the two girls, accompanied as usual by Hortense, started in the
carriage for Lulu's home, which was on Madison Avenue, only a few blocks
away.

Lulu was a charming little hos