“There is no stumbling to worry about with an automobile,” said Daisy.

“You couldn’t use one on this hill without more risk than you take with a stumbling horse,” replied Alice.  Just then a carriage drawn by two fine bays passed them, and there was an interchange of nods.

“There is Mrs. Sturtevant,” said Alice.  “She isn’t using the automobile to-day.”

“Doctor Sturtevant has had that coachman thirty years, and he doesn’t chew, he drives,” said Daisy.

Then they drew up before the house which was their destination, Mrs. George B. Slade’s.  The house was very small, but perkily pretentious, and they drove under the porte-cochere to alight.

“I heard Mr. Slade had been making a great deal of money in cotton lately,” Daisy whispered, as the carriage stopped behind Mrs. Sturtevant’s.  “Mr. and Mrs. Slade went to the opera last week.  I heard they had taken a box for the season, and Mrs. Slade had a new black velvet gown and a pearl necklace.  I think she is almost too old to wear low neck.”

“She is not so very old,” replied Alice.  “It is only her white hair that makes her seem so.”  Then she extended a rather large but well gloved hand and opened the coupe door, while Jim Fitzgerald sat and chewed and waited, and the two young women got out.  Daisy had some trouble in holding up her long skirts.  She tugged at them with nervous energy, and told Alice of the twenty-five cents which Fitzgerald would ask for the return trip.  She had wished to arrive at the club in fine feather, but had counted on walking home in the dusk, with her best skirts high-kilted, and saving an honest penny.

“Nonsense; of course you will go with me,” said Alice in the calmly imperious way she had, and the two mounted the steps.  They had scarcely reached the door before Mrs. Slade’s maid, Lottie, appeared in her immaculate width of apron, with carefully-pulled-out bows and little white lace top-knot.  “Upstairs, front room,” she murmured, and the two went up the polished stairs.  There was a landing halfway, with a diamond paned window and one rubber plant and two palms, all very glossy, and all three in nice green jardinieres which exactly matched the paper on the walls of the hall.  Mrs. George B. Slade had a mania for exactly matching things.  Some of her friends said among themselves that she carried it almost too far.

The front room, the guest room, into which Alice Mendon and Daisy Shaw passed, was done in yellow and white, and one felt almost sinful in disturbing the harmony by any other tint.  The walls were yellow, with a frieze of garlands of yellow roses; the ceiling was tinted yellow, the tiles on the shining little hearth were yellow, every ornament upon the mantel-shelf was yellow, down to a china shepherdess who wore a yellow china gown and carried a basket filled with yellow flowers, and bore a yellow crook.  The bedstead was brass, and there was a counterpane of white lace over yellow, the muslin curtains were tied back with great bows of yellow ribbon.  Even the pictures represented yellow flowers or maidens dressed in yellow.  The rugs were yellow, the furniture upholstered in yellow, and all of exactly the same shade.