The swishing swelled to a mighty rustle as the door opened.  Taffeta was good this year, and the three who entered were the last in the world to leave you in ignorance of that fact.  Ella Morrissey presented her new friend to the three, giving the department each represented as one would mention a title or order.

“The little plump one in black?—­Ladies’ and Misses’ Ready-to-wear, Gates Company, Portland....  That’s a pretty hat, Carrie.  Get it to-day?  Give me a big black velvet every time.  You can wear ’em with anything, and yet they’re dressy too.  Just now small hats are distinctly passy.

“The handsome one who’s dressed the way you always imagined the Parisiennes would dress, but don’t?—­Fancy Goods, Stein & Stack, San Francisco.  Listen, Fan:  don’t go back to San Francisco with that stuff on your lips.  It’s all right in Paris, where all the women do it; but you know as well as I do that Morry Stein would take one look at you and then tell you to go upstairs and wash your face.  Well, I’m just telling you as a friend.

“That little trick is the biggest lace buyer in the country....  No, you wouldn’t, would you?  Such a mite!  Even if she does wear a twenty-eight blouse she’s got a forty-two brain—­haven’t you, Belle?  You didn’t make a mistake with that blue crepe de chine, child.  It’s chic and yet it’s girlish.  And you can wear it on the floor, too, when you get home.  It’s quiet if it is stunning.”

These five, as they sat there that June evening, knew what your wife and your sister and your mother would wear on Fifth Avenue or Michigan Avenue next October.  On their shrewd, unerring judgment rested the success or failure of many hundreds of feminine garments.  The lace for Miss Minnesota’s lingerie; the jewelled comb in Miss Colorado’s hair; the hat that would grace Miss New Hampshire; the dress for Madam Delaware—­all were the results of their farsighted selection.  They were foragers of feminine fal-lals, and their booty would be distributed from oyster cove to orange grove.

They were marcelled and manicured within an inch of their lives.  They rustled and a pleasant perfume clung about them.  Their hats were so smart that they gave you a shock.  Their shoes were correct.  Their skirts bunched where skirts should bunch that year or lay smooth where smoothness was decreed.  They looked like the essence of frivolity—­until you saw their eyes; and then you noticed that that which is liquid in sheltered women’s eyes was crystallised in theirs.

Sophy Gold, listening to them, felt strangely out of it and plainer than ever.

“I’m taking tango lessons, Ella,” chirped Miss Laces.  “Every time I went to New York last year I sat and twiddled my thumbs while every one else was dancing.  I’ve made up my mind I’ll be in it this year.”

“You girls are wonders!” Miss Morrissey marvelled.  “I can’t do it any more.  If I was to work as hard as I have to during the day and then run round the way you do in the evening they’d have to hold services for me at sea.  I’m getting old.”