Nina came in and closed the door. She was smaller than Elizabeth and
very pretty. Her eyebrows had been drawn to a tidy line, and from the
top of her shining head to her brown suede pumps she was exquisite with
the hours of careful tending and careful dressing she gave her young
body. Exquisitely pretty, too.

She sat down on Elizabeth's bed with a sigh.

"I really don't know what to do with father," she said. "He flies off
at a tangent over the smallest things. Elizabeth dear, can you lend me
twenty dollars? I'll get my allowance on Tuesday."

"I can give you ten."

"Well, ask mother for the rest, won't you? You needn't say it's for me.
I'll give it to you Tuesday."

"I'm not going to mother, Nina. She has had a lot of expenses this
month."

"Then I'll borrow it from Wallie Sayre," Nina said, accepting her defeat
cheerfully. "If it was an ordinary bill it could wait, but I lost it at
bridge last night and it's got to be paid."

"You oughtn't to play bridge for money," Elizabeth said, a bit primly.
"And if Leslie knew you borrowed from Wallace Sayre--"

"I forgot! Wallie's downstairs, Elizabeth. Really, if he wasn't so
funny, he'd be tragic."

"Why tragic? He has everything in the world."

"If you use a little bit of sense, you can have it too."

"I don't want

"Pooh! That's what you think now. Wallie's a nice person. Lots of girls
are mad about him. And he has about all the money there is." Getting
no response from Elizabeth, she went on: "I was thinking it over last
night. You'll have to marry sometime, and it isn't as though Wallie was
dissipated, or anything like that. I suppose he knows his way about, but
then they all do."

She got up.

"Be nice to him, anyhow," she said. "He's crazy about you, and when I
think of you in that house! It's a wonderful house, Elizabeth. She's got
a suite waiting for Wallie to be married before she furnishes it."

Elizabeth looked around her virginal little room, with its painted
dressing table, its chintz, and its white bed with the blue dress on it.

"I'm very well satisfied as I am," she said.

While she smoothed her hair before the mirror Nina surveyed the room and
her eyes lighted on the frock.

"Are you still wearing that shabby old thing?" she demanded. "I do wish
you'd get some proper clothes. Are you going somewhere?"

"I'm going to the theater on Wednesday night."

"Who with?" Nina in her family was highly colloquial.

"With Doctor Livingstone.