There was none of Mrs. Draper’s habits of life which made more of an impression on Sylvia’s imagination than her custom of disregarding engagements and appointments, of coming and going, appearing and disappearing quite as she pleased.  To the daughter of a scrupulously exact family, which regarded tardiness as a fault, and breaking an appointment as a crime, this high-handed flexibility in dealing with time and bonds and promises had an exciting quality of freedom.

On a good many occasions these periods of waiting chanced to be shared by Eleanor Hubert, for whom, after the first two or three encounters, Sylvia came to have a rather condescending sympathy, singularly in contrast to the uneasy envy with which she had regarded her only a few months before.  However, as regards dress, Eleanor was still a phenomenon of the greatest interest, and Sylvia never saw her without getting an idea or two, although it was plain to any one who knew Eleanor that this mastery of the technique of modern American costume was no achievement of her own, that she was merely the lovely and plastic material molded, perhaps to slightly over-complicated effects, by her mother’s hands.

From that absent but pervasive personality Sylvia took one suggestion after another.  For instance, a very brief association with Eleanor caused her to relegate to the scrapheap of the “common” the ready-made white ruching for neck and sleeves which she had always before taken for granted.  Eleanor’s slim neck and smooth wrists were always set off by a few folds of the finest white chiffon, laid with dexterous carelessness, and always so exquisitely fresh that they were obviously renewed by a skilful hand after only a few hours’ wearing.  The first time she saw Eleanor, Sylvia noticed this detail with appreciation, and immediately struggled to reproduce it in her own costume.  Like other feats of the lesser arts this perfect trifle turned out to depend upon the use of the lightest and most adroit touch.  None of the chiffon which came in Aunt Victoria’s boxes would do.  It must be fresh from the shop-counter, ruinous as this was to Sylvia’s very modest allowance for dress.  Even then she spoiled many a yard of the filmy, unmanageable stuff before she could catch the spirit of those apparently careless folds, so loosely disposed and yet never displaced.  It was a phenomenon over which a philosopher might well have pondered, this spectacle of Sylvia’s keen brain and well-developed will-power equally concerned with the problems of chemistry and philosophy and history, and with the problem of chiffon folds.  She herself was aware of no incongruity, indeed of no difference, between the two sorts of efforts.

Many other matters of Eleanor’s attire proved as fruitful of suggestion as this, although Aunt Victoria’s well-remembered dictum about the “kitchen-maid’s pin-cushion” was a guiding finger-board which warned Sylvia against the multiplication of detail, even desirable detail.