r your acquaintance. When you are older, you
will come to understand how these chance meetings may lead to the most
valuable friendships, or, on the contrary, to the most mortifying
embarrassments. In the mean time, you are to be guided." After which
little sententious homily out of the Book of the World, Mrs. Thoresby
ruffled herself with dignity, and led her brood away with her.

Next day, Tom, Dick, and Harry--that is to say, Miss Craydocke, Susan
and Martha Josselyn, and Leslie Goldthwaite--were gathered in the
first-named lady's room, to make the great green curtain. And there Sin
Saxon came in upon them,--ostensibly to bring the curtain-rings, and
explain how she wanted them put on; but after that she lingered.

"It's like the Tower of Babel upstairs," she said, "and just about as
likely ever to get built. I can't bear to stay where I can't hear myself
talk. You're nice and cosy here, Miss Craydocke." And with that, she
settled herself down on the floor, with all her little ruffles and
flounces and billows of muslin heaping and curling themselves about her,
till her pretty head and shoulders were like a new and charming sort of
floating-island in the midst.

And it came to pass that presently the talk drifted round to vanities
and vexations,--on this wise.

"Everybody wants to be everything," said Sin Saxon. "They don't say so,
of course. But they keep objecting, and unsettling. Nothing hushes
anybody up but proposing them for some especially magnificent part. And
you can't hush them all at once in that way. If they'd only _say_ what
they want, and be done with it! But they're so dreadfully polite! Only
finding out continual reasons why nobody will do for this and that, or
have time to dress, or something, and waiting modestly to be suggested
and shut up! When I came down they were in full tilt about 'The Lady of
Shalott.' It's to be one of the crack scenes, you know,--river of blue
cambric, and a real, regular, lovely property-boat. Frank Scherman sent
for it, and it came up on the stage yesterday,--drivers swearing all the
way. Now they'll go on for half an hour, at least; and at the end of
that time I shall walk in, upon the plain of Shinar, with my hair all
let down,--it's real, every _bit of it_, not a tail tied on
anywhere,--and tell them I--myself--am to be the Lady of Shalott! I
think I shall relish flinging in that little bit of honesty, like a dash
of cold water into the middle of a fry. Won't it sizz