Lydia, her father’s favourite, came in with a loaded tray, just as Len, slipping down the back stairs, was being stealthily regaled by his mother on a late meal in the kitchen.  Len had no particular desire for his father’s undiluted company.

“Good morning, Pa!” Lydia said, with a kiss for his cool forehead.  “Your paper’s right there by the fire; there’s quite a fog, and it got wet.”

Hands locked, she settled herself opposite him, and revolved in her mind the terms in which she might lay before him the younger girls’ hopes.  It was part of Lydia’s concientiousness not to fail them now, even though she secretly disapproved of the whole thing.

“Pa,” she began bravely, “you wouldn’t mind the girls having some of their friends in some evening, would you?  I thought perhaps some night when you were down in the city—­”

“Your idea, my dear?” Malcolm said graciously.

“Well—­Martie’s really.”  Lydia was always scrupulously truthful.

His face darkened a little.  He pursed his lips.

“Dinner, eh?”

“Oh, no, Pa!  Just dancing, or—­” Lydia was watching him closely, “or games,” she substituted hurriedly.  “You see the other girls have these little parties, and our girls—­” her voice fell.

“Such an affair costs money, my dear!”

“Not much, Pa!”

His eyes were discontentedly fixed upon the headlines of his paper, but he was thinking.

“Making a lot of work for your mother,” he protested, “upsetting the whole house like a pack of wolves!  Upon my word, I can’t see the necessity.  Why can’t Sally and Martie—­”

“But it’s only once in a long while, Pa,” Lydia urged.

“I know—­I know!  Well, you ask Martie to speak to me about it in a day or two.  Now go call your mother.”

For the gracious permission Lydia gave him an appreciative kiss, leaving him comfortable with his fire, his newspaper, and his armchair, as she went on her errand.

“Pa was terribly sweet about the dance,” she told Martie and Sally.

Belle was now deep in breakfast dishes, and the two girls had gone out into the foggy dooryard with the chickens’ breakfast.  A flock of mixed fowls were clucking and pecking over the bare ground under the willows.  Martie held the empty tin pan in one hand, in the other was a half-eaten cruller.  Sally had turned her serge skirt up over her shoulders as a protection against the cool air, exposing a shabby little “balmoral.”

“Oh, Lyd, you’re an angel!” Martie said, holding the cruller against Lydia’s mouth.  But Lydia expressed a grateful negative with a shake of her head; she never nibbled between meals.

She retailed the conversation with her father.  Martie and Sally became fired with enthusiasm as they listened.  An animated discussion followed.  Grace was a problem.  Dared they ignore Grace?  There was a lamentable preponderance of girls without her.  All their lists began and ended with, “Well, there’s Rodney and his friends—­ that’s two—­”