“You didn’t ask him,” said Mrs. Marshall, with her usual directness.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith arched her eyebrows, dropped her eyelids, and shook her head.  “No, I didn’t ask him,” she admitted, and then with a little wry twist of her lips, “But I rather hoped he might feel like coming.”  She looked down at her hands.

Mrs. Marshall surprised her daughters very much by going across the room and kissing her husband’s sister.  Mrs. Marshall-Smith took the other’s strong, hard hand between her soft fingers.  “That’s generous in you, Barbara,” she said, looking intently into the pitying dark eyes, “I’m human, you know,”

“Yes, I know you’re human,” said Mrs. Marshall, looking down at her gravely.  “So are we all of us.  So’s Elliott.  Don’t forget that.”  With which obscure reference, entirely unintelligible to the two girls, the matter was forever dropped.

The two ladies thereupon embarked upon the difficult business of laying out to the best advantage the few days before them so that every hour might be utilized for the twofold purpose of seeing each other and having the girls see the sights.  Judith went to the window during this conversation, and looked down into the crowded street, the first city street she had ever seen.  Sylvia sat quietly and imprinted upon her memory every item in the appearance of the two women before her, not the first time she had compared them.  Mrs. Marshall was dressed in a dark-blue, well-preserved, ready-made suit, dating from the year before.  It was in perfect condition and quite near enough the style of the moment to pass unnoticed.  Sylvia saw nothing to be ashamed of in her mother’s unaccented and neutral costume, but there was no denying that she looked exactly like any one else.  What was most apparent to the discerning eye was that her garb had been organized in every detail so as to consume as little thought and effort as possible.  Whereas Aunt Victoria—­Sylvia’s earnest and thoughtful efforts at home-dressmaking had fitted her, if for nothing else, for a full appreciation of Mrs. Marshall-Smith’s costume.  She had struggled with cloth enough to bow her head in respect and awe before the masterly tailoring of the rich, smooth broadcloth dress.  She knew from her own experience that the perfection of those welted seams could not be accomplished by even the most intense temporary concentration of amateur forces.  No such trifling fire of twigs lighted the way to that pinnacle.  The workman who had achieved that skill had cut down the whole tree of his life and thrown it into the flame.

Like a self-taught fiddler at the concert of a master, Sylvia’s failures had taught her the meaning of success.  Although her inexperience kept her from making at all a close estimate of the literal cost of the toilet, her shrewdness made her divine the truth, which was that Mrs. Marshall-Smith, in spite of the plainness of her attire, could have clad herself in cloth-of-gold at a scarcely greater expenditure of the efforts and lives of others.  Sylvia felt that her aunt was the most entirely enviable person in the world, and would gladly have changed places with her in a moment.