“Make father a case to carry his traveling slippers in,” said Natalie promptly. “You can easily do it; just an oblong with a flap; he will put it in his bag when he goes away for a night. It is a case to keep the slippers from touching other things--a white tie, for instance! If we don’t get ready we shall keep mama waiting. She always allows us enough time and then has no mercy on us for being behindhand. Mama demands punctuality from us in all our engagements.” “Aunt Rebecca always says ‘procrastination is the thief of time’ and that if I get into the habit of being late I’ll be doubly dishonest, stealing my own time and other people’s too. It’s really strange how much alike Aunt Alida and Aunt Rebecca are in their way of seeing things, though they certainly aren’t one bit alike any other way, and Aunt Rebecca never would believe they could be alike at all,” said Beth scrambling her papers and pencil together and hastening off to prepare for her first extensive shopping on her own account. It was noon when the Cortlandt car joined the line of its fellows skirmishing in and out before the doors of the great shops in and around Thirty-fourth Street. It deposited its four occupants at a vast plate glass doorway and disappeared to allow its successor to come up and to wait until it should be summoned to resume its passengers. With what seemed to Beth like superhuman swiftness Natalie and Alys selected the gifts upon which they had already determined, said briefly: “Charged and sent,” and went on to the next purchase. After a while Beth, too, woke up from her maze and decided upon her gifts for the girls at home. She found herself in possession of four bangles, almost alike, slender golden hoops, for the four girls who stood in the second tier of friendship toward her; these bangles were to be marked with the girls’ initials and sent to her uncle’s later, each in an alluring square box with white velvet lining. She also found that she had bought for Janie an exquisite little circle brooch, set with sapphires, which, Beth foresaw, would match Janie’s eyes, and which Beth found appropriate, as well as satisfactory, for the clerk assured her that brooches of this sort were called “Friendship circles,” and that their endlessness was an emblem of true friendship, such as she knew hers and Janie’s would prove to be. Aunt Alida, too, bought in this shop, so glorified by great spaces, fine bronzes, glittering gems, that it seemed ridiculous to speak of it as a shop. She bought swiftly and decidedly, at times secretly, so that the lynx-eyed girls did not know what it was that she had quickly ordered “charged and sent.” But she selected many things that Beth did see, with awe and admiration. Trinkets “for her girls’ other cousins,” she said, for her friends, silver mesh purses, beautiful things in leather and glass, as well as in gold, silver and jewels.