“I thought you were in remarkable health, your frame is so large.”

Adelaide was there, and answered for me.  “You are delicate.  It must be because you do not take care of yourself.”

“Wolf’s Point to be avoided, perhaps!”

“I have walked to Wolf’s Point for fifteen years, night and day, many times.”

“Mr. Munster’s man left this note for you,” her mother said, handing it to her.

She read an invitation from Miss Munster, a cousin, to a small party.

“You will not be able to go,” Mrs. Somers remarked to me.

“You will go,” Adelaide said; “it is an attention to you altogether.”

She never replied to her mother, never asked her any questions, so that talking between them was a one-sided affair.

“Let us go out shopping, Adelaide; I want some lace to wear,” I begged.

Mrs. Somers looked into her drawers, out of which Adelaide had thrust her finery, and found mine, but said nothing.

“We are going to a party, Ann.  Thanks to your messes and your nursing,” as I passed her in the hall.

“Where is your evening dress?”

“Pinned in a napkin—­like my talent.”

“Old Cousin Munster, the pirate, who made his money in the opium trade, has good things in his house.  I suppose,” with a coquettish air, “that you will see Ned Munster; he would walk to the door with me to-day.  He wishes me out, I know.”

We consumed that evening in talking of dress.  Adelaide showed me her camel’s-hair scarfs which Desmond had brought, and her dresses.  Ann tried them all on, walking up and down, and standing tiptoe before the glass, while I trimmed a handkerchief with the lace I had purchased.  I unfolded my dress after they were gone, with a dubious mind.  It was a heavy white silk, with a blue satin stripe.  It might be too old-fashioned, for it belonged to mother, who would never wear it.  The sleeves were puffed with bands of blue velvet, and the waist was covered with a berthe of the same.  It must do, however, for I had no other.

We were to go at nine.  Adelaide came to my room dressed, and with her hair arranged exactly like mine.  She looked well, in spite of her Mongolic face.

“Pa wants to see us in his room; he has gone to bed.”

“Wait a moment,” I begged.  I took my hair down, unbraided it, brushed it out of curl as much as I could, twisted it into a loose mass, through which I stuck pins enough to hold it, bound a narrow fillet of red velvet round my head, and ran after her.

“That is much better,” she said; “you are entirely changed.”  Desmond was there, in his usual careless dress, hanging over the footboard of the bed, and Ann was huddled on the outside.  Mrs. Somers was reading.

“Pa,” said Ann, “just think of Old Hepburn’s giving her a pair of lovely ear-rings.”

“Did she?  Where are they?” asked Mrs. Somers.