Mrs. Frost had installed herself as favorite since Mrs. Alger had praised her hair.  She now came forward, and, dropping fondly at her knee, looked up to her for instruction.  “Don’t you think that she showed her sense in giving up at the very beginning, if she found she was n’t equal to it?” She gave her head a little movement from side to side, and put the mass of her back hair more on show.

“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Alger, looking at the favorite not very favorably.

“Oh, I don’t think she’s given up,” Miss Gleason interposed, in her breathless manner.  She waited to be asked why, and then she added, “I think she’s acting in consultation with Dr. Mulbridge.  He may have a certain influence over her,—­I think he has; but I know they are acting in unison.”

Mrs. Merritt flung her grass-straw away.  “Perhaps it is to be Dr. Mulbridge, after all, and not Mr. Libby.”

“I have thought of that,” Miss Gleason assented candidly.  “Yes, I have thought of that.  I have thought of their being constantly thrown together, in this way.  It would not discourage me.  She could be quite as true to her vocation as if she remained single.  Truer.”

“Talking of true,” said Mrs. Scott, “always does make me think of blue.  They say that yellow will be worn on everything this winter.”

“Old gold?” asked Mrs. Frost.  Yes, more than ever.”

“Dear!” cried the other lady.  “I don’t know what I shall do.  It perfectly kills my hair.”

“Oh, Miss Gleason!” exclaimed the young girl.

“Do you believe in character coming out in color?”

“Yes, certainly.  I have always believed that.”

“Well, I’ve got a friend, and she wouldn’t have anything to do with a girl that wore magenta more than she would fly.”

“I should suppose,” explained Miss Gleason, “that all those aniline dyes implied something coarse in people.”

“Is n’t it curious,” asked Mrs. Frost, “how red-haired people have come in fashion?  I can recollect, when I was a little girl, that everybody laughed at red hair.  There was one girl at the first school I ever went to,—­the boys used to pretend to burn their fingers at her hair.”

“I think Dr. Breen’s hair is a very pretty shade of brown,” said the young girl.

Mrs. Merritt rose from the edge of the piazza.  “I think that if she hasn’t given up to him entirely she’s the most submissive consulting physician I ever saw,” she said, and walked out over the grass towards the cliff.

The ladies looked after her.  “Is Mrs. Merritt more pudgy when she’s sitting down or when she’s standing up?” asked Mrs. Scott.

Miss Gleason seized her first chance of speaking with Grace alone.  “Oh, do you know how much you are doing for us all?”

“Doing for you, all?  How doing?” faltered Grace, whom she had whisperingly halted in a corner of the hall leading from the dining-room.

“By acting in unison,—­by solving the most perplexing problem in women’s practising your profession.  She passed the edge of her fan over her lips before letting it fall furled upon her left hand, and looked luminously into Grace’s eyes.