while Sylvia, again with that odd sensation of delight,
slipped over the young head a lace-trimmed petticoat, and fastened
it, and then the tea-gown. The older woman dressed the girl with
exactly the same sensations that she might have experienced in
dressing her own baby for the first time. When the toilet was
completed she viewed the result, however, with something that savored
of disapproval.

Rose, after looking in the glass at her young beauty in its setting
of lace and silk, looked into Sylvia's face for the admiration which
she felt sure of seeing there, and shrank. "What is the matter? Don't
I look nice?" she faltered.

Sylvia looked critically at the sleeves of the tea-gown, which were
mere puffs of snowy lace, streaming with narrow ribbons, reaching to
the elbow. "Do they wear sleeves like that now in New York?" asked
she.

"Why, yes!" replied Rose. "This tea-gown came home only last week
from Madame Felix."

"They wear sleeves puffed at the bottom instead of the top, and a
good deal longer, in East Westland," said Sylvia.

"Why, this was made from a Paris model," said Rose, meekly. Again
sophistication was abashed before the confidence of conservatism.

"I don't know anything about Paris models," said Sylvia. "Mrs.
Greenaway gets all her patterns right from Boston."

"I hardly think madame would have made the sleeves this way unless it
was the latest," said Rose.

"I don't know anything about the latest," said Sylvia. "We folks here
in East Westland try to get the _best_." Sylvia felt as if she were
chiding her own daughter. She spoke sternly, but her eyes beamed with
pleasure. The young girl's discomfiture seemed to sweeten her very
soul.

"For mercy's sake, hold up your dress going down-stairs," she
admonished. "I swept the stairs this morning, but the dust gathers
before you can say boo, and that dress won't do up."

Rose gathered up the tail of her gown obediently, and she also
experienced a certain odd pleasure. New England blood was in her
veins. It was something new and precious to be admonished as a New
England girl might be admonished by a fond mother.

When she went into the south room, still clinging timidly to her lace
train, Horace rose. Henry sat still. He looked at her with pleased
interest, but it did not occur to him to rise. Horace always rose
when Sylvia entered a room, and Henry always rather resented it.
"Putting on society airs," he thought to himself, with a sneer.

How