The Carter house was a broad, double brick in a terraced, well-kept yard. Herndon, the negro man, opened the door to Adele's ring. Within, the house was sedate with inherited Carter furniture, Carter portraits, the emphasis being laid on the Carter side and not the Grosvenor; one could not but notice, handsomely cased books and, so it seemed, every nature of paper and periodical.

"Though really," Maudie always said, "unless Mr. Carter chances to stay home long enough from the club, or from boards of directors, or the toast master's chair at banquets, no one but Adele ever reads them."

It was an ordeal to go through a meal at the Carters. A meal at Maud's home was substantial and well served, with Mrs. Addison, her capable, dominant mother at one end of the table and her pillar-of-the-church father at the other end, her younger brothers and sisters and herself along the sides, and most always, some divine or layman of church note, strange in the city. A meal at Juliette's house, was abundant and the family manners natural. Her mother was so pretty one overlooked poor management and poor servants, and Mr. Caldwell, her father, made up for his rather tiresome teasing by lavish tips and royal boxes of candy as recompense to hurt feelings.

At Amanthus' home only women prevailed, and a meal there was like Mrs. Harrison and Amanthus themselves, easy and pretty and charming.

But here at the Carters as now, the occasion was an ordeal. Being six o'clock dinner, and copied from the Grosvenor soap-and-lard Chicago kin, it truly was dinner, in a sense Mamma and Aunt Viney had no comprehension of, soup to finish.

Adele and Selina came downstairs together at the summons, Adele in an overmodish dress in coral pink, in which Amanthus would have looked enchanting, and in which she looked unhappy, and after Selina had been greeted, took their places with the family about the table.

Mrs. Carter who was blonde, and whose hair was elaborately dressed, was in blue like Selina; Mrs. Grosvenor, her mother, whose hair was gray and even more elaborately dressed, was in black net with a deal of cascading lace and many rings; and Mr. Carter, a person of parts, with moustaches and an imperial, was in a hurry as always, and too disposed to hasten the meal to its close, to be sociable. Again as Maudie said, his reputation for wit and conversation and charm must have been gained away from home.

"Adele tells me you have reconsidered your regrets, Selina, and will be with us at our reception," said Mrs. Carter just a shade languidly. "I'm sure we're very glad."

"Selina was in Florida, Mamma, when her mother declined for her," put in Adele quickly. "Naturally she will come. Selina's popular; she may teach me how to be."

"If you wouldn't decry yourself in this way, Adele," began her mother.

"I tell her so all the time," said Mrs. Grosvenor.

"But you both, Mamma and Grandmamma, have decried me for so many years yourselves, trying to improve me, I can't see myself otherwise," pleaded Adele.

"For your own good, as you allow," from Mrs. Carter.

"A girl has to be formed," from her grandmother.

"I was a perfect failure at my first big party thus far, Selina," said Adele, laughing a little desperately, "and with Mamma and Grandmamma there to see. I——"

"Can't we let this fish go and have the roast, Adelia?" from Mr. Carter to his wife.

"If Adele would not talk so laboredly to men," said Mrs. Grosvenor, to no one in particular that Selina could discover. "Her mother and I overheard her speaking to young Tuttle Jones at this same dancing party. And on my word for it, Adele, I heard you ask that poor man, I put your actual speech to mind that I might confront you with it—if he thought Christianity was a revolt of Hebraism against Hellenism? These were your very words! I told them to your mother and asked her to help me to remember them. It's perfectly understandable why Mr. Jones has declined your affair. Men hate such things."

"I had to talk about something," said Adele wretchedly. "I'd been reading about it in Papa's Quarterly."

"Adele would go to the public schools with the rest of you," Mrs. Carter addressed this to Selina, "and her father permitted it because she cried every time mother and I took it up. Now the little cliques and sets among the young people of my friends are made up when she goes among them, and she feels out of it."

"I don't see what there is to it that you and Grandmamma should want me to feel in it," avowed Adele.

"Roswell," this from Mrs. Carter to her husband, ignoring the remark from her daughter, "I had a note yesterday that I forgot to mention, from charming old Mrs. Jinnie Hines Cumming. She says in the most gracious way that nothing could prevent her coming to see your daughter and Mamma's granddaughter, launched upon her career, and that she has a graceless great-nephew living now in town who never comes to see her, but whom she asks to bring with her."

Now it was conceded among Olympians that the social scepter was wielded by Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle, aunt of Tuttle Jones, only because Mrs. Jinnie Cumming grown old chose to pass it on.

"Mamma loves lions," said Adele and laughed a little nervously.

"Ergo, my dear young friend Selina," said Mr. Carter, suddenly attentive and kindly and polite, as getting up to go from his untouched dessert and hastily swallowed coffee, he came round to shake hands, "bring a lion or two and find yourself persona grata. And in the mean season, in the face of this discouragement from the cliques and sets, don't go back on our Adele."

Nor did he nor Selina dream how literally and triumphantly in this matter of lions she was to obey him! She was to rout disparagement at least for once!

But in the immediate mean season she was hot and sore and indignant. When she found herself alone with Adele again after dinner, she burst forth: "Adele, why do you force your mother to ask us to your affairs? She doesn't want us."

"Selina, Oh Selina, if you and Maud and Juliette go back on me! What else have I got? Everything pleasant that I've known has come through you or them. One of the really pleasant things, such as I mean, happened the other night just before you got home. Mr. Cannon called for the first time. He is so irrepressible and ridiculous and clever, too, and jokes and quizzes so, I forget to be self-conscious. Mamma wanted to know who he was and if I could vouch for him, but there's always something. I answered pretty crossly, I expect. At any rate she won't let me ask him for the reception. I feel terribly about it."