Mary took up the chant.  “Her skin’s like a rose leaf.”

And Grace:  “Her hair is going to be gold, like her mother’s.”

“Hair?” Delilah’s tone was incredulous.  “She hasn’t any.”

Aunt Frances expertly turned the small morsel on its back.  “What do you call that?” she demanded, indignantly.

Above the fat crease of the baby’s neck stuck out a little feathery duck’s-tail curl—­bright as a sunbeam.

“What do you call that?” came the chorus of worshipers.

Delilah gave way to quiet, mocking laughter.  “That isn’t hair,” she said; “it is just a sample of yellow silk.”

Porter, coming up, was treated to a repetition of this remark.

“Let us thank the Gods that it isn’t red,” was his fervent response.

Grace’s hands went up to her own lovely hair.

“Oh,” she reproached him.

Porter apologized.  “I was thinking of my carroty head.  Yours is glorious.”

“Artists paint it,” Grace agreed pensively, “and it goes well with the right kind of clothes.”

Delilah looked from one to the other.

“You two would make a beautiful pair of saints on a stained glass window,” she said reflectively, “with a spike of lilies and halos back of your heads.”

“Most women are ready for halos,” Porter said, “and wings, but I can’t see myself balancing a spike of lilies.”

“Nor I,” Grace rippled; “you’d better make it hollyhocks, Delilah—­do you know the old rhyme

  “’A beau never goes
  Where the hollyhock blows’?”

“You’ve never lacked men in your life,” Delilah told her, shrewdly, “but with that hair you won’t be one of the comfortable married kind—­it will be either a grande passion or a career for you.  If you don’t find your Romeo, you’ll be Mother Superior in a convent, the head of a deaconess home, or a nurse on a battle-field.”

Grace’s eyes sparkled.  “Oh, wise Delilah, you haven’t drifted so very far away from my dreams.  Where did you get your wisdom?”

“I’m learning things from Colin Quale.  We study types together.  It’s great fun for me, but he’s perfectly serious.”

Colin Quale was Delilah’s artist.  “Why didn’t you bring him?” Constance asked.

“Because he doesn’t belong in this family group; and anyhow I had something for him to do.  He’s making a sketch of the gown I am to wear at the White House garden party.  It will keep him busy for the afternoon.”

“Delilah,” Leila looked up from her worship of Mary-Constance, “I don’t believe you ever see in people anything but the way they look.”

“I don’t, duckie.  To me—­you are a sort of family art gallery.  I hang you up in my mind, and you make a rather nice little collection.”

Barry, coming in, caught up her words, with something of his old vivacity.

“The baby belongs to the Dutch school—­with that nose.”