* * * * *

“That girl is what I call a surprise-party, now,” remarked Mr. Joe confidentially to his cigar, as he pulled off his coat and stuck his feet up in the privacy of his own apartment.  “She looks as mild as strawberries and cream till you come to the complimentary, then she turns on a fellow with that deused satirical look of hers, and makes him feel like a fool.  I’ll try the moral dodge to-morrow, and see what effect that will have; for she is mighty taking, and I must amuse myself somehow, you know.”

“How many years will it take to change that fresh-hearted little girl into a fashionable belle, I wonder?” thought Frank Evan, as he climbed the four flights that led to his “sky-parlor.”

“What a curious world this is!” mused Debby, with her nightcap in her hand.  “The right seems odd and rude, the wrong respectable and easy, and this sort of life a merry-go-round, with no higher aim than pleasure.  Well, I have made my Declaration of Independence, and Aunt Pen must be ready for a Revolution, if she taxes me too heavily.”

As she leaned her hot cheek on her arm, Debby’s eye fell on the quaint little cap made by the motherly hands that never were tired of working for her.  She touched it tenderly, and love’s simple magic swept the gathering shadows from her face, and left it clear again, as her thoughts flew home like birds into the shelter of their nest.

“Good night, mother!  I’ll face temptation steadily.  I’ll try to take life cheerily, and do nothing that shall make your dear face a reproach, when it looks into my own again.”

Then Debby said her prayers like any pious child, and lay down to dream of pulling buttercups with Baby Bess, and sinking in the twilight on her father’s knee.

* * * * *

The history of Debby’s first day might serve as a sample of most that followed, as week after week went by with varying pleasures and increasing interest to more than one young debutante.  Mrs. Carroll did her best, but Debby was too simple for a belle, too honest for a flirt, too independent for a fine lady; she would be nothing but her sturdy little self, open as daylight, gay as a lark, and blunt as any Puritan.  Poor Aunt Pen was in despair, till she observed that the girl often “took” with the very peculiarities which she was lamenting; this somewhat consoled her, and she tried to make the best of the pretty bit of homespun which would not and could not become velvet or brocade.  Seguin, Ellenborough, & Co. looked with lordly scorn upon her, as a worm blind to their attractions.  Miss MacFlimsy and her “set” quizzed her unmercifully behind her back, after being worsted in several passages of arms; and more than one successful mamma condoled with Aunt Pen upon the terribly defective education of her charge, till that stout matron could have found it in her heart to tweak off their caps and walk on them, like the irascible Betsey Trotwood.