at about a party dress? Ought I to have satin, or chiffon, or blue
net, or what?"

"Well, satin is too dignified, and chiffon too perishable, and blue net
is too tessie. Why don't you try black net over black satin? You know
there's really lots of color in black satin if you know how to use it.
Get good materials, and then you can use them over and over
again--perhaps white chiffon over the black satin."

"White over black?"

Though Miss Joline stared down with one of the quick, secretive smiles
which Una hated, the smile which reduced her to the rank of a novice,
her eyes held Miss Joline, made her continue her oracles.

"Yes," said Miss Joline, "and it isn't very expensive. Try it with the
black net first, and have soft little folds of white tulle along the
edge of the decolletage--it's scarcely noticeable, but it does soften
the neck-line. And wear a string of pearls. Get these Artifico pearls, a
dollar-ninety a string.... Now you see how useful a snob is to the
world! I'd never give you all this god-like advice if I didn't want to
advertise what an authority I am on 'Smart Fashions for Limited
Incomes.'"

"You're a darling," said Una.

"Come to tea," said Miss Joline.

They did go to tea. But before it, while Miss Joline was being voluble
with Mr. Truax, Una methodically made notes on the art of dress and
filed them for future reference. Despite the fact that, with the support
of Mr. Schwirtz as her chief luxury, she had only sixteen dollars in the
world, she had faith that she would sometime take a woman's delight in
dress, and a business woman's interest in it.... This had been an
important hour for her, though it cannot be authoritatively stated which
was the more important--learning to dress, or learning not to be in awe
of a Joline of Gramercy Park.

They went to tea several times in the five months before the sudden
announcement of Miss Joline's engagement to Wally Castle, of the Tennis
and Racquet Club. And at tea they bantered and were not markedly
different in their use of forks or choice of pastry. But never were they
really friends. Una, of Panama, daughter of Captain Golden, and wife of
Eddie Schwirtz, could comprehend Walter Babson and follow Mamie Magen,
and even rather despised that Diogenes of an enameled tub, Mr. S.
Herbert Ross; but it seemed probable that she would never be able to do
more than ask for bread and railway tickets in the language of Beatrice
Joline, whose dead father had be