Beth went with Natalie into the adjoining dressing room. She felt like a very little girl. To be sure at home big girls of fifteen seemed older than she, but Natalie was almost a young lady--still she was kind. And Alys seemed worlds away from this little country cousin. While she found herself wishing that Dirk actually was worlds away, he called after her: “Look out, Beth; Nat keeps mice in her dressing room!” With which pleasant fiction he disappeared, and Beth heard him sliding down the balustrade in the hall with a wild whoop which was like the whoops of the boys at home, whom she and Janie Little always feared. After a time Natalie was ready for dinner in a crimson cloth gown that made her look “like an Indian princess,” thought Beth vaguely. Alys was dainty in her pale pink. Both girls wore their hair rolled behind their ears and tied in great drooping bows. Their hands were white, with nails like ivory tips. Beth glanced at her own firm little tanned hands, and their round little nails that showed the marks of gardening and climbing. “I’m going to grow them!” she thought, and followed the girls down-stairs. Mrs. Cortlandt met them. She was all in black lace, with American Beauty roses at her belt. Beth looked up at her aunt’s white shoulders and down at her train. “Is there a party?” she asked timidly. “Only ourselves, Bethie. You’re the only party, and you’re such a very little party!” laughed Aunt Alida, tucking the little guest under her arm. They went down to the library, and from the depths of a great chair arose a tall gentleman in evening clothes; at a glance Beth saw that she looked like him, but she was afraid of him, none the less. “Jim, here is Bethie,” said Aunt Alida, and Beth found that the tall man was kissing her most tenderly. “My dear, you look like your mother, and I’m much obliged to you,” he said. Then a solemn person, also in evening clothes, whom Beth had not seen, drew aside the portière. “Madam, dinner is served,” he said softly. Mr. Cortlandt bent and put Beth’s hand through his arm. “Allow me to take you out to dinner, Miss Bristead; Dirk, offer your mother your arm,” he said. Beth was so frightened that for a moment she wanted to run away or cry--both, perhaps. But she looked up sideways into her uncle’s face and caught the twinkle in a pair of blue eyes decidedly like the pair that looked back at her every day in her glass. So she altered her mind, and laughed instead of crying. Thus with perfect cheerfulness Beth went out to her first formal dinner. CHAPTER V ALL SORTS OF NEW STEPS Only on the first morning of her visit did Beth oversleep. The second morning she was up bright and early, so early that, with some misgiving of doing wrong, she had dressed before Frieda came to call her.