Amanthus stopped by one afternoon a week later, to see Selina. If Adele was entirely occupied in going to luncheons, dinners and cotillions, where she did not shine, so that Selina saw little of her, Amanthus was equally occupied in going to these same affairs, where she did shine, and Selina saw less of her.

She was returning from a luncheon now, lovely child, and a fawn-colored hat set off her hair and face, and a fawn-colored wrap enveloped her. She had come by with a message.

"But first I ought to say, Mr. Verily Blanke and Mr. Doe sent back polite messages. I haven't seen you since the day Mamma and I spent with them at my uncle's stock-farm. They're going out as far as California while they're in this country, stopping everywhere, and up into Canada. They don't go back to England before next summer. If Mamma and I go east to her cousin's summer place, we'll see them again at Bar Harbor. And, Selina, Mr. Doe says everybody in London, to the plainest and the ugliest, even the princesses royal, have bangs. He wasn't talking about horses as I thought at first, but about people. Mamma says bangs are copied from a doubtful person, an actress, and she's not sure she wants to see me have them. And that brings me to what I came for. And first, may I go out to the mirror in the hat-tree and fix my hat on better? It feels crooked and I'm going from here to pay a party call."

She went out to the glass and talked back from this point as she resettled her hat. "Mamma is trying this new thing, of serving tea in the afternoon, as perhaps you know, Selina. She thought my coming-out winter was a good time to begin it. It was while you were away we started it, and she wants you and Maud and Juliette and Adele to come for a cup to-morrow."

Selina very ardently adored Mrs. Harrison and an invitation from her was a privilege.

"There's sure to be some men drop by, too, now it's getting to be understood about it," explained Amanthus coming back into the parlor, "your Mr. Tate, for one," as though this person in kind were a creature entirely peculiar to Selina's world and unclassified in hers, "ever since we asked him to our dance in fact. Lately Mr. Welling and Mr. Cannon and Culpepper have been coming, too, as if they do it to plague him. He told them real testily, the last time, he wished they would not follow him around."

"That's why they do it," said Selina, even while she was adapting herself to this new and surprising viewpoint of Culpepper and his group, habituÉs at Mrs. Harrison's!

Amanthus rather unexpectedly resented this imputation on Mr. Tate. She replied almost sharply, "I like Mr. Tate myself, though I suppose he comes more to see Mamma. He talks to me about the Caesars and the Atlantic cable and Garfield. You think I don't know how the rest of you, Maud and every one of you, change the subject when I come and talk down to me, but I do."

True enough, every word of this indictment! And true also that Mr. Tate did talk to Amanthus and Amanthus was pleased that he should.

"Shall I tell Mamma you'll come, Selina?"

"Oh, always, Amanthus, you know I'd never decline a chance to be where your mother is."

The next afternoon, Selina went downstairs in best dress, coat, hat and gloves, to join Adele come by for her and waiting on the doorstep outside in velvet coat, velvet hat and furs against a background of early dusk and spitting snow. As they neared the Harrison house at the other end of the block, a brick dwelling with a slate mansard, sitting high in its trim corner yard, they saw Maud and Juliette on the steps. Maud in hunter's green, and Juliette still wan of cheek, but as if a bit defiantly, tricked out in brave scarlet. Hurrying they joined the two as Hetty, the maid, opened the door.

Ushered in they found Mrs. Harrison in the second of the two parlors in a big and comfortable chair before the open fire. They loved her fair hair drawn in water waves about her brow and temples; they loved her flowing apricot-toned cashmere with its fichu and hand ruffles and its touches of blue; they loved her fine and frankly beautiful face.

They long had known her story, too, from their elders. A rich girl, raised by her uncle, owner of the Selimcroft stock-farm, she had married a man considerably her senior, a person of charm and much social note, who bringing her here to this community, had wasted her property in shocking fashion in his own behalf, and practiced economy almost to scandal upon her. Since his death when Amanthus was a bit of thing, she had managed the wreck of her affairs herself, prudently and thriftily, bringing herself and her child to where they were.

Mrs. Harrison laid her book on the table by her as the group came in. She, without being aware of it, was advocate and sponsor for much of their present reading, a recently heard of English writer, one Hardy, being the latest met with at her hands, she claiming for him a new departure in heroines. "A Pair of Blue Eyes," was the volume she was laying down now, as their quick eyes saw. By the end of the week, some one of them would have secured it from the circulating library, and the four would have read it, too. In what way were these heroines of this Hardy new in departure? Just what did Mrs. Harrison mean? Was Hardy defending them in their types because they were what the world had made them? These were the questions the four asked each other after reading each volume.

"Well, my dears! Let Hetty have your wraps and come and join me. Amanthus is the victim of her own pertinacity. I gave in at last this morning and agreed she might go down to Miss Lucy at the hair-store and have her hair shingled into a bang. With every one of you now snipping surreptitiously at her hair more and more each day—yes, you well may blush, Maud, you bear the proofs upon you—we opposing elders may as well give in and let you have your bangs. The deed being done, Amanthus had to rush downtown again this afternoon with Mary, the upstairs maid, carrying band-boxes, every hat she owns proving too big in the crown from this cropped arrangement. She'll be in presently. I'm glad to have you to myself this bit."

They came flocking back after depositing their coats, and found seats about the fire as near to her as might be. They loved her hands which were white and shapely and well cared for. They loved her generous comprehendings and her unfailing appreciations. They knew, for example, that she already would have noted and with pleasure in the noting, that Adele's new ruche was becoming, that Maud was wearing her first man-tailored suit, that Juliette's scarlet box-coat just removed, was fetching, that Selina in her cashmere that was open a bit at the throat, had lowered her abundant hair to a Langtry knot at the nape of her pretty neck, if her mother wouldn't let her have a Langtry bang over her forehead.

"Amanthus told Selina we talk down to her, Mrs. Harrison," burst forth little Juliette. "Though I can't see why, with her dozen to our one of every sort of thing, she should care. We felt we'd have to tell you."

"That I might absolve you?" smiled Mrs. Harrison. "Amanthus is a dear goose, a very dear but palpable goose."

Did this lovely lady with the sweet and even pityingly tender eyes pause here, as with one deliberating, and in resuming, speak as to a seen end? Or was she by chance a Medea sowing dragon's teeth for these of her own sex from which should spring the discontents of the future?

"Amanthus is a dear goose," slowly, "but has it occurred to you alert young people, that so long as things are as they are for us women, so long as our only avenue to place and establishment continues to be through marriage, Amanthus is the enviable one among us, the one forever safe and contentedly sweet and insured within the confines of her own docility and femininity, the one that will never rebel, the one that will never ask why? And that as things are as they are, we perhaps should be the more rejoiced to have Amanthus as she is."

"So long as things are as they are?" "So long as our only avenue to place and establishment continues to be through marriage?"

This group of four young people looked at Mrs. Harrison startled, and as though not sure they quite were getting her meaning.

The outer door was heard to open and close, and Amanthus quite literally blew in, snow-sprinkled and wind-tossed, Amanthus who brought into dim rooms the golden effulgence of youth and radiance and beauty, Amanthus, the forever safe and contentedly sweet and insured.

She tossed off her big, softly plumed beaver hat, and behold, she was shingled to her yellow crown! But also, she was in despair.

"Mamma—girls, I'm so glad to see you—I was reading the fashion-paper I bought on the way, while I waited at the milliner's. It's too discouraging. It says Queen Victoria has tabooed bangs. What sort do you suppose tabooed bangs are? The latest thing I suppose! And here, just to-day, I've had mine shingled into Langtry ones!"

"And yet," said Mrs. Harrison laughing, even if tenderly, and drawing Amanthus down to her and kissing her, the while she gave a look all whimsical to the others across the yellow-head, "and yet, in the name of every one of us, why would we have her one whit different?"

What did Mrs. Harrison mean? Why was she thus including them and not Amanthus in these implications and indictments? The four looked at each other, non-plussed and wondering, and for some reason just the least bit disturbed.