there had been a dull nod of the head, a feeble pull at the dragging robe, then it had dragged again.

“Oh, don't mind, dear,” said Alice Mendon. “It is his own lookout if he loses the robe.”

“It isn't that,” responded Daisy querulously. “It isn't that. I don't care, since he is so careless, if he does lose it, but I must say that I don't think it is safe. Suppose it got caught in the wheel, and I know this horse stumbles.”

“Don't worry, dear,” said Alice Mendon. “Fitzgerald's robe always drags, and nothing ever happens.”

Alice Mendon was a young woman, not a young girl (she had left young girlhood behind several years since) and she was distinctly beautiful after a fashion that is not easily affected by the passing years. She had had rather an eventful life, but not an event, pleasant or otherwise, had left its mark upon the smooth oval of her face. There was not a side nor retrospective glance to disturb the serenity of her large blue eyes. Although her eyes were blue, her hair was almost chestnut black, except in certain lights, when it gave out gleams as of dark gold. Her features were full, her figure large, but not too large. She wore a dark red tailored gown; and sumptuous sable furs shaded with dusky softness and shot, in the sun, with prismatic gleams, set off her handsome, not exactly smiling, but serenely beaming face. Two great black ostrich plumes and one red one curled down toward the soft spikes of the fur. Between, the two great blue eyes, the soft oval of the cheeks, and the pleasant red fullness of the lips appeared.

Poor Daisy Shaw, who was poor in two senses, strength of nerve and money, looked blue and cold in her little black suit, and her pale blue liberty scarf was horribly inadequate and unbecoming. Daisy was really painful to see as she gazed out apprehensively at the dragging robe, and the glistening slant over which they were moving. Alice regarded her not so much with pity as with a calm, sheltering sense of superiority and strength. She pulled the inner robe of the coupé up and tucked it firmly around Daisy's thin knees.

“You look half frozen,” said Alice.

“I don't mind being frozen, but I do mind being scared,” replied Daisy sharply. She removed the robe with a twitch.

“If that old horse stumbles and goes down and kicks, I want to be able to get out without being all tangled up in a robe and dragged,” said she.

“While the horse is kicking and down I don't see how he can drag you very far,” said Alice with a slight laugh. Then the horse stumbled. Daisy Shaw knocked quickly on the front window with her little, nervous hand in its tight, white kid glove.

“Do please hold your reins tighter,” she called. Again the misty blue eyes rolled about, the head nodded, the rotary jaws were seen, the robe dragged, the reins lay loosely.

“That wasn't a stumble worth mentioning,” said Alice Mendon.

“I wish he would stop chewing and drive,” said poor Daisy Shaw vehemently. “I wish we had a liveryman as good as that Dougherty in Axminister. I was making calls there the other day, and it was as slippery as it is now, and he held the reins up tight every minute. I felt safe with him.”

“I don't think anything will happen.”

“It does seem to me if he doesn't stop chewing, and drive, I shall fly!” said Daisy.

Alice regarded her with a little wonder. Such anxiety concerning personal safety rather puzzled her. “My horses ran away the other day, and Dick went down flat and barked his knees; that's why I have Fitzgerald to-day,” said she. “I was not hurt. Nobody was hurt except the horse. I was very sorry about the horse.”

“I wish I had an automobile,” said Daisy. “You never know what a horse will do next.”

Alice laughed again slightly. “There is a little doubt sometimes as to what an automobile will do next,” she remarked.

“Well, it is your own brain that controls it, if you can run it yourself, as you do.”

“I am not so sure. Sometimes I wonder if the automobile hasn't an uncanny sort of brain itself. Sometimes I wonder how far men can go with the invention of machinery without putting more of themselves into it than they bargain for,” said Alice. Her smooth face did not contract in the least, but was brooding with speculation and thought.

Then the horse stumbled again, and Daisy screamed, and again tapped the window.

“He won't go way down,” said Alice. “I think he is too stiff. Don't worry.”

“There is no stumbling to worry about with an automobile,” said Daisy.

“You couldn't use one on this hill without more risk than you take with a stumbling horse,” replied Alice. Just then a carriage drawn by two fine bays passed them, and there was an interchange of nods.

“There is Mrs. Sturtevant,” said Alice. “She isn't using the automobile to-day.”

“Doctor Sturtevant has had that coachman thirty years, and he doesn't chew, he drives,” said Daisy.

Then they drew up before the house which was their destination, Mrs. George B. Slade's. The house was very small, but perkily pretentious, and they drove under the porte-cochère to alight.

“I heard Mr. Slade had been making a great deal of money in cotton lately,” Daisy whispered, as the carriage stopped behind Mrs. Sturtevant's. “Mr. and Mrs. Slade went to the opera last week. I heard they had taken a box for the season, and Mrs. Slade had a new black velvet gown and a pearl necklace. I think she is almost too old to wear low neck.”

“She is not so very old,” replied Alice. “It is only her white hair that makes her seem so.” Then she extended a rather large but well gloved hand and opened the coupé door, while Jim Fitzgerald sat and chewed and waited, and the two young women got out. Daisy had some trouble in holding up her long skirts. She tugged at them with nervous energy, and told Alice of the twenty-five cents which Fitzgerald would ask for the return trip. She had wished to arrive at the club in fine feather, but had counted on walking home in the dusk, with her best skirts high-kilted, and saving an honest penny.

“Nonsense; of course you will go with me,” said Alice in the calmly imperious way she had, and the two mounted the steps. They had scarcely reached the door before Mrs. Slade's maid, Lottie, appeared in her immaculate width of apron, with carefully-pulled-out bows and little white lace top-knot. “Upstairs, front room,” she murmured, and the two went up the polished stairs. There was a landing halfway, with a diamond paned window and one rubber plant and two palms, all very glossy, and all three in nice green jardinières which exactly matched the paper on the walls of the hall. Mrs. George B. Slade had a mania for exactly matching things. Some of her friends said among themselves that she carried it almost too far.

The front room, the guest room, into which Alice Mendon and Daisy Shaw passed, was done in yellow and white, and one felt almost sinful in disturbing the harmony by any other tint. The walls were yellow, with a frieze of garlands of yellow roses; the ceiling was tinted yellow, the tiles on the shining little hearth were yellow, every ornament upon the mantel-shelf was yellow, down to a china shepherdess who wore a yellow china gown and carried a basket filled with yellow flowers, and bore a yellow crook. The bedstead was brass, and there was a counterpane of white lace over yellow, the muslin curtains were tied back with great bows of yellow ribbon. Even the pictures represented yellow flowers or maidens dressed in yellow. The rugs were yellow, the furniture upholstered in yellow, and all of exactly the same shade.

There were a number of ladies in this yellow room, prinking themselves before going downstairs. They all lived in Fairbridge; they all knew each other; but they greeted one another with the most elegant formality. Alice assisted Daisy Shaw to remove her coat and liberty scarf, then she shook herself free of