CHAPTER IV

The evening was half over when Sheila, still up-borne on the tide of her feminine exultation, glanced across the room to find that Peter stood there quietly regarding her. Straightway she forsook the youth who was administering awkward flattery to her new-born vanity, and hastened to the side of her old friend.

"Oh, Peter, don't I look nice?" she demanded eagerly.

But Peter ignored the frank appeal for a compliment. "I think you'd better call me Mr. Burnett," said he. And his tone was so serious that she failed to catch the banter of his eyes.

"Why, I've always called you Peter, just like grandmother does—always!"

"Yes," admitted Peter, "and it's been very jolly and friendly. But, Sheila, I must have something to remind me that you're still a little girl and my pupil. There's nothing in your appearance to suggest it, but perhaps—if you will address me with a great deal of respect——"

At that, Sheila laughed and patted her frock: "Oh, I understand you now! Do I really seem so grown-up?"

"So grown-up that I can't understand how Mrs. Caldwell came to let you do it."

"Oh, Peter! Oh, Peter!"

"Why, what's the matter?" he asked, surprised at the poignant exclamation. But she turned abruptly away from him, and presently he saw her blue gown flutter through a distant doorway.

"Now I wonder," he pondered, "what in the world I've done. Offended her by appearing to criticize Mrs. Caldwell, I suppose."

But Peter had done a much graver thing than that. Unconsciously, he had summoned Sheila's conscience to its deserted duty; and already, like any well-intentioned conscience that has taken a vacation, it was making up for lost time.

With that comment of Peter's—"I can't understand how Mrs. Caldwell came to let you do it"—Sheila's little house of pleasure suddenly tumbled to the ground. She had not meant to be sorry about the deception of the frock until after the party, and until her encounter with Peter she had been successful enough in holding penitence at bay. That vision of herself in the mirror, seeming to answer some longing of her very soul, had indeed kept her forgetful of everything but a sense of fulfillment and triumph. But now, reminded of her grandmother, she began to be sorry at once—impatiently, violently sorry.

"I must go home," she murmured to herself distressfully, as she slipped unobserved through the crowded rooms. "I must go home. I can't wait until morning! I must tell grandmother now!"

And so it happened that Mrs. Caldwell, looking out from her sitting-room window into the early spring night, saw a slim figure speed up her garden path as if urged by some importunate need; and the next moment Sheila was kneeling before her, with her face hidden upon her shoulder.

"Why, Sheila!—dear child!"

"Oh, grandmother, will you forgive me?"

"What should I forgive you? I'm sure you've done nothing wrong this time!" And Mrs. Caldwell, who was accustomed to the rigors of Sheila's conscience, smiled above the face on her breast with tender amusement.

But Sheila sprang to her feet and stepped back a pace or two. "Don't you see?" she cried tragically.

And then Mrs. Caldwell discovered the transformation of her Cinderella. No demure little maiden this, in the white muslin and blue ribbons of an ingenuous spirit, but a fashionably clad "young lady," who appeared to have grown suddenly tall and rather stately with the clothing of her slim body in the long, soft gown.

"Sheila!" exclaimed Mrs. Caldwell involuntarily. And then, with her hands outstretched to the impressive young culprit, "Tell me all about it, dear."

And sitting on the floor at her grandmother's feet, regardless of Charlotte's crushed flounces, Sheila poured out her impetuous confession, from the first moment of temptation and yielding to the final one of Peter's awakening words.

"And when he spoke of you, grandmother, I just couldn't bear it! I wondered how I could have been happy at all—I wondered how I could have forgotten you for a minute! I hated the frock! I hated the party! And I hated myself most of all! I had to come home and ask you to forgive me right away!"

And down went her head into Mrs. Caldwell's lap. "Do you—-think—you can forgive me?" came the muffled plea.

For answer Mrs. Caldwell bent and kissed the prostrate head, and it burrowed more comfortably against her knee. But Mrs. Caldwell did not speak. She was waiting for something, and when Sheila continued to burrow, in the contented silence of a penitence achieved, she inquired quietly: "Well, dear?"

Sheila lifted her head at that, and looked straight into the wise, sweet eyes above her: "I wanted something! I wanted something dreadfully! And I didn't know what it was. And then, when I saw myself in Charlotte's frock—and so changed—I thought I'd found what I wanted. I thought—I thought I'd wanted to be beautiful!"

"Yes," said Mrs. Caldwell gently, "I used to think that, too."

"Oh, grandmother, did you? Then you understand how I felt! But—but, you see, it didn't last. I wanted to be good more. That's what made me come home. Grandmother, do you suppose that's what I've wanted all the time, without knowing it—to be good?"

At the question, Mrs. Caldwell, wise gardener that she was, realized that one of the flowers which she had divined, stirring in the depths of Sheila's being, was pushing its way upward to the light, and that the moment had come for her to help it. She slipped her arms around the girl kneeling before her, as if seeking in love's touch inspiration for love's words.

"I think you will always want to be good," she said, "and I think you will always want to be beautiful. Women do, Sheila dear—even the women who are least beautiful and least—good. It's part of being a woman—just like loving things that are little and helpless.

"But, Sheila, being beautiful isn't enough! Even being good isn't enough, though of course it ought to be. It's essential, but it isn't enough. Every woman must have something else besides to make her happy—something that is hers, her own! She must have that to be beautiful for, and to be good for—she must have that to live for!

"And that is what you want, dear—the thing that is your own. You have been born for that—you cannot be complete or content without it."

Mrs. Caldwell's voice rose, grave and rich with the harmonies of life, through the peaceful room, and Sheila quivered responsively in the circle of her arms. To the young girl, womanhood, that only yesterday had been so far away, now seemed to be drawing thrillingly near with all its attendant mysteries. And in her next question she took a step to meet it:

"Grandmother, what is it?—the thing that will be mine?"

"Dear, how can I tell? It isn't the same for us all. For one woman it is love; for another it is work; for some it is, blessedly, both work and love. For me—now—it is you! How can I tell what it will be for my little girl?"

"I want it!" whispered Sheila. "I want it!"

"You must wait for it, dear. You must wait for it to come to you. You can't hurry life."

"But can't I do anything?"

"You can be good, and you can be beautiful, so that you'll be ready for it when it comes. But"—and now Mrs. Caldwell smiled, and with her smile the stress of the moment passed—"but not in Charlotte's frock! It wouldn't be fair to make yourself beautiful with borrowed plumage, would it, little bird of paradise? You'd only get a borrowed happiness out of that—one that you hadn't a right to, and couldn't keep."

Sheila rose from her knees, smiling, too. "I'll go right upstairs and take it off," she declared. "I want to play fair from the start—I only want what's really mine!"

And so, coming back, under Mrs. Caldwell's tactful guidance, from the deep