“You can be pleasant to everybody,” said mother and elder sister, with a salvo of Christian benignity.

But it is so hard for little children to be pleasant with fence and limitation.

“Where must I stop?” Lily had asked in her simplicity.  “When they give me a piece of their luncheon, or when they walk home from school, or when they say they will come in a little while?”

But there came a message back from Boston by the eleven o’clock train on the morning of the Tuesday with a little “t,” from Mr. Marchbanks himself, to say that his brother and Mr. Geoffrey would come up with him to dinner, and to desire that carriages might be ready afterward for the drive over to Waite’s grove.

Mrs. Marchbanks marveled, but gave her orders.  Arthur came out early, and brought with him his friend Archie Mucklegrand, and these two were bound also for the merry-making.

Now Archie Mucklegrand was the identical youth of the lavender pantaloons and the waxed moustache, whom Desire, as “Miss Ledwith,” had received in state a year and a half ago.

So it was an imposing cavalcade, after all, from West Hill, that honored the very indiscriminate pleasure party, and came riding and driving in at about six o’clock.  There were the barouche and the coupe; for the ladies and elder gentlemen, and the two young men accompanied them on horseback.

Archie Mucklegrand had been at West Hill often before.  He and Arthur had just graduated at Harvard, and the Holabirds had had cards to their grand spread on Class Day.  Archie Mucklegrand had found out what a pretty girl—­and a good deal more than merely pretty—­Rosamond Holabird was; and although he might any day go over to his big, wild Highland estate, and take upon himself the glory of “Sir Archibald” there among the hills and moors,—­and though any one of a good many pretty girls in Spreadsplendid Park and Republic Avenue might be induced, perhaps, if he tried, to go with him,—­all this did not hinder him from perceiving that up here in Z——­ was just the most bewitching companionship he had ever fallen in with, or might ever be able to choose for himself for any going or abiding; that Rosamond Holabird was just the brightest, and sweetest, and most to his mind of any girl that he had ever seen, and most like “the woman” that a man might dream of.  I do not know that he quite said it all to himself in precisely that way; I am pretty sure that he did not, as yet; but whatever is off-hand and young-mannish and modern enough to express to one’s self without “sposhiness” an admiration and a preference like that, he undoubtedly did say.  At any rate after his Christmas at Z——­ with Arthur, and some charade parties they had then at Westover, and after Class Day, when everybody had been furious to get an introduction, and all the Spreadsplendid girls and their mothers had been wondering who that Miss Holabird was and where she came from, and Madam Mucklegrand herself—­not having the slightest