“By this time I was established in Gladys’ green slippers with rhinestone buckles, and Gladys was putting all of her own and Phyllis’ rings on my fingers, and Phyllis was using a crimping iron on my curls.  I was too curly already, but Phyllis said natural curliness was not the thing any more.  Then Gladys began dabbing funny sticky stuff all over my fingers, and scratching my eyebrows, and powdering about twenty layers on my face and throat.  After that, she rubbed my finger nails until I could almost see what they were doing to me.  I never thought I had much hair, but when Phyllis got through with me I could hardly carry it.  The ladies in Hawaii who carry bushel baskets on their heads will tell you how I felt.  And whenever I moved it wabbled.  But they both clapped their hands and said I looked like a dream, and of course I would have acquired another bushel had they advised it.

“I trusted them because they look so wonderful when they are finished,—­just right,—­never too much so.

“Our bell rang then, and Phyllis answered and said, ’Tell them Miss Starr will be in in a moment.’

“There is a general apartment maid, and when we wish to be very perfectly fine, we borrow her,—­for a quarter.

“When I knew they had arrived, I leaped up, panic-stricken, and dived head first into that pile of Nile green silk and real lace.  They rescued me tenderly, and pushed me in, and hooked me here, and buttoned me there, both panting and gasping, I madly hurrying them on, because I can’t get over that silly old parsonage notion that it isn’t good form to keep folks waiting.

“‘There you are,’ cried Gladys.

“‘Fly,’ shouted Phyllis.

“Out I dashed, recollected myself in the bathroom, and—­yes, I did that foolish thing, Carol.  Your vanity would have saved you such a blunder.  But I tore myself from their blood-stained hands, and went in to meet a millionaire’s son’s mother without looking myself over in the mirror.

“When I parted the curtains, Andy leaped to his feet with his usual quick eagerness, but he stopped abruptly and his lips as well as his eyes widened.

“‘How do you do?’ I said, moistening my lips which already felt too wet, only I didn’t know what was the matter with them.  I held out my hand, unwontedly white, and he took it flabbily, instead of briskly and warmly as he usually did.

“‘Mother,’ he said, ‘I want you to meet Miss Starr.’

“She wasn’t at all the kind of millionaire’s son’s mother we have read about.  She had no lorgnette, and she did not look me over superciliously.  But she had turned my way as though confident of being pleased, and her soft eyes clouded a little, though she smiled sweetly.  Her hair was silver white and curled over her forehead and around her ears.  She had dimples, and she stuck her chin up like a girl when she laughed.  She wore the softest, sweetest kind of a wistaria colored silk.  I was charmed with her.  It could not have been mutual.