younger Lawrences, was
hopelessly aged and sere, and Eulalie, in particular, a lately opened
blossom of eighteen, made it a matter of daily duty to keep Elvira's
soul from closing its eyes, even in the briefest nap, upon this fact.

Elvira had grown into her spinsterhood without rebellion and with the
quietude of mind conferred by an even disposition. She had been a
trifle old-maidish in her youth. That was in the era of bangs and
frizzes and heads of hair that resembled ill-used dish mops.

"Gaudy but not neat," had been Elvira's comment, and she let her light
brown locks lie softly close to her head, undipped and unkinked. And
mankind, with eyes accustomed to the ever present moppy snarls and
curls, vaguely supposed Elvira to be behind the times, and amiably
passed her by.

Later, Elvira developed the spinsterly accomplishment of darning her
own delicate silk stockings to finished perfection, and was promptly
importuned by all the young Lawrences to darn theirs. She
consented--and her doom was pronounced.

When twenty-five years of life had deepened the smooth pink of
Elvira's cheek and amplified the lissome curves of her figure, her
next younger sister, Hazel, a girl of twenty-two, had asked her to sit
in the drawing room and play propriety on the evenings when the
younger sister received callers, and she had done so.

When the matrimonial destiny of Hazel was fulfilled, Marion was coming
forward to be chaperoned; then Rosamond; and now--thorniest bud on the
Lawrence family tree--Eulalie was fully blown, and quite alive to the
beguilements of dress and the desirability of beaux.

Eulalie's exactions were upsetting to the tranquil mind. Eulalie
wanted--not possession of the earth, but to _be_ the earth, and to be
duly revolved around by friends, relatives and countless planetary
lovers. Elvira's days grew turbid and her nights devoid of repose.

There had been no comforting maternal support to nestle against since
the birth of the youngest Lawrence flower, and the paternal bush
towered out of reach in an aloof atmosphere of bonds and rentals and
dividends. One old-fashioned point of view he enforced upon his
children's vision: the elder daughter must supervise and chaperon the
younger ones to the last jot, and it must be done without disturbance
of the business atmosphere.

So Elvira warred with her daily briers alone. Reproach and appeal
alike spattered off Eulalie's buoyant nature as a water sprinkler's
s