ng with clear cold
water; and they sat there in a circle like a thicket of fluttering
pale-pink roses, until below the last guest had sped out into the
unknown wastes of Gotham, and the poet's heavy step was on the stair.

The poet was agitated--and like a humble bicolored quadruped of the
Rose-Cross wilds, which, when agitated, sprays the air--so the poet,
laboring obesely under his emotion, smiled with a sweetness so
intolerable that the air seemed to be squirted full of saccharinity to
the point of plethoric saturation.

"My lambs," he murmured, fat hands clasped and dropped before him as
straight as his rounded abdomen would permit; "my babes!"

"Do you think," suggested Aphrodite, busy with her ice, "that we are
going to enjoy this winter in Mr. Wayne's house?"

"Enjoyment," breathed the poet in an overwhelming gush of sweetness, "is
not in houses; it is in one's soul. What is wealth? Everything!
Therefore it is of no value. What is poverty? Nothing! And, as it is the
little things that are the most precious, so nothing, which is less than
the very least, is precious beyond price. Thank you for listening; thank
you for understanding. Bless you."

And he wandered away, almost asphyxiated with his emotions.

"I mean to have a gay winter--if I can ever get used to being laced in
and pulled over by those dreadful garters," observed Aphrodite,
stretching her smooth young limbs in comfort.

"I suppose there would be trouble if we wore our country clothes on
Broadway, wouldn't there?" asked Lissa wistfully.

Chlorippe, aged thirteen, kicked off her sandals and stretched her
pretty snowy feet: "They were never in the world made to fit into
high-heeled shoes," she declared pensively, widening her little rosy
toes.

"But we might as well get used to all these things," sighed Philodice,
rolling over among the cushions, a bunch of hothouse grapes suspended
above her pink mouth. She ate one, looked at Dione, and yawned.

"I'm going to practise wearing 'em an hour a day," said Aphrodite,
"because I mean to go to the theater. It's worth the effort. Besides, if
we just sit here in the house all day asking each other Greek riddles,
we will never see anybody until Iole and Vanessa come back from their
honeymoon and give teas and dinners for all sorts of interesting young
men."

"Oh, the attractive young men I have seen in these few days in New
York!" exclaimed Lissa. "Would you believe it, the first day I walked
out wi