Between a confusion of carpet covering and potted plants I went upstairs in search of the "bud."

"Only two hundred and ten bouquets," she cried in a tempest of discontent, "and Betty Bell (the rival bud) is to have a five-thousand-dollar ball and I am not! Mother says it isn't giving the ball she'd mind, but it's people not coming. It's easy enough sending out invitations, but the mean thing is, people accept and don't come. That's the latest fashion," cried this bitter "bud." "Mother said she'd be mortified to death to give a ball and have nobody but the waiters to drink up the champagne. We're of just enough importance to have our invitations accepted and thrown over if anything better turns up."

Such was her perfectly justifiable wail.

That afternoon at six I came again in my best clothes. A reception is after all the simplest of social functions. It entails no obligations, and is as democratic as an electric car. It is perhaps one of the few functions in which even the noblest society may use its elbows, and as a school for staring, the kind that sees through the amplest human body as if it were mere air, nothing could be more useful and practical. It is an interesting study to observe how the female lorgnette is on such occasions so triumphant an impediment to sight.

Well, the whole street proclaimed the coming-out of Nancy. Carriages lined the curbstones and an awning announced the festive nature of the occasion. A band, crowded into a cubby-hole usually sacred to "father's" overcoats and umbrellas, tried vainly to penetrate the talk—there was a dense crush of human beings, and over all there was a mixed aroma of hot air, flowers, and coffee. At the top of the "parlour," before a bank of flowers, and burdened with bouquets, stood Nancy, all in expensive white simplicity, her face radiant, and supported by an utterly exhausted mother. Six young men who served as ushers, in collars tall enough for a giraffe, brought up relays of friends to be introduced to mother and "bud"—all just like a wedding, only the hero was wanting, and for "mother's" sake one did wish the occasion had had a hero. Last year's "buds" were brought up and examined this year's "bud," and there was a great deal of chatter and hand-shaking, of the pump-handle kind, and a pushing past each other of magnificent matrons in the latest things in hats.

I was escorted up by one of the young giraffes, who solemnly introduced me. A mighty different "bud" this from the one of the morning.

"I've got two hundred and forty bouquets," she whispered triumphantly; and just then I caught mother's weary eye and knew as absolutely as one knows anything in this uncertain world that "father" had sent in thirty. Really, there is nothing so loving, so generous and so weak in this wide world as an American father.

I was swept on by a crush of prosperous matrons accompanied by expensively simple daughters—the matrons making obviously disparaging mental criticisms about each other's daughters. For real simple, unassuming jealousy there is nothing like rival mothers! So I was pushed into the dining-room where the chief ornaments were four Gibson girls in party frocks who, at a flower-laden centre-table, in the mellow light of rose-shaded candles, dispensed glances, coffee, smiles, and tea, and other frivolous afternoon refreshments. They had the best of it, these beautiful young things at the table, especially when they could annex an occasional man.

At half past seven the last visitor had gone, the function was over and Nancy was "out," and "mother" sat drearily on a couch which had the demoralised air of furniture horribly out of place. Everything drooped except those stalwart American beauty roses, so costly, so splendid, so hard, and so unromantic. O national flower of Americans!

I caught a glimpse of "father" vanishing down the front steps on his way to the club. Nancy had flung herself into a big deep chair, and from this point she looked coldly at "mother."

"The Perkinses did not come," was all she said, but "mother" gave a start and groaned. The Perkinses represented the bloom of the occasion, and the Perkinses had not come. There was nothing further to be said—Maria did remark that it was as expensive as a wedding. "And to think it isn't dinner time yet," she added drearily.

"At any rate Nancy is 'out,'" I said.

"But it was horribly expensive."

"Well, then, what did you have all this expense and bother for?"

"One has to do it," she cried in stony despair; "it's our standard—"

"Champagne standard," I interrupted.

"I don't know what you mean." Maria has all the virtues, but no sense of humour.

"Then, for goodness' sake, why have her come out at all?"

Maria shuddered and looked cautiously about. Nancy had vanished.

"I'd die of mortification if she didn't marry. I won't have her turn on me and say I hadn't given her a chance."

"But, Maria, you married your good and prosperous Samuel without coming out. That didn't frighten him away! The highest standard your parents ever aspired to was cider, and that only on state occasions."

"That is all changed," said my unhappy friend. "We have got to—"

"Pretend; that's just it, Maria! But why don't you give up pretending and be happy? Did our parents ever pretend? They didn't. Think of your father's simple home and his big bank account, and then think of your Samuel with all his expenses and his cares."

But Maria was not to be convinced by argument—she was completely crushed by the Perkinses not having come, and she declared obstinately that her supreme duty in life was to get Nancy married—well if possible, but at any rate married.

Maria is only a type, but she stands for aspirations in the wrong place, and she is worn out with it. She has many virtues—that is, she has no vices. Her whole soul is wrapped up in Nancy. Nancy is her religion. She believes in Nancy, though she never took her Samuel seriously. She married him in the simple period of her existence, and by the time she began to aspire she had other ideals, and Samuel was more of a bore to her than an ideal. Samuel did not take to her new aspirations as readily as she. Men never do. Nancy constituted her romance; and yet she was an impartial mother, for mothers can be divided in two classes, those who are too partial and those who are impartial. Her mission in life was to marry off Nancy.

"I'd rather she'd be married unhappily than not at all," she said to me one day when I saw her again. "A real unhappiness is more healthy to bear than an imaginary one."

Nancy herself furnished the particulars of her own private creed.

"I'd rather be married even if I were unhappy. It's my own unhappiness, and I want my own whatever it is."

I suggested that there were other aims in life than getting married.

"Perhaps," she said, "but I haven't any. I've been brought up to that. Most girls are, only they don't tell. I haven't to earn my living and I haven't any talent for anything. If I don't marry, Ma'll be mortified to death and she'll show it and that'll make me mad. Father won't care and he won't notice that I'm growing older, though we girls don't grow old prettily. We get pinched, and our little hands—for we have little hands—grow clawy, and our hair gets thin at the temples, and we have too much gold in our front teeth. Of course we are real pretty when we are happy. But think of spending life seeing father go to sleep after dinner, and mother playing patience—ugh! I've told mother if she doesn't take me abroad I'll go slumming. There's no chance here. Half the men are too busy making money to get married and the others are afraid."

"So this is your education," I said later on to Maria; "I am glad you have only one child."

"So am I," said Maria wearily, "for two would kill me."

Then in a burst of confidence: "She hangs fire. She isn't strikingly plain nor strikingly beautiful, one's about as good as the other. She has no