The battle was won! For the next week Mrs Vanburgh's party was the one subject of discussion with the Trevor sisters. Betty was agitated on the subject of her dress, and being denied a new sash, subsided into gloom for the space of ten minutes, when with a sudden turn of the wheel a mental picture was presented of a ship ploughing across the seas, bearing a lonely emigrant to his difficult task, when it became, all of a sudden, contemptible beyond words to fret oneself about--a ribbon! As she herself had said, having once come face to face with tragedy, her eyes were opened to the petty nature of her own trials. She ironed and pressed, and viewing the shabby bows and insufficient ends, said bravely: "Who cares? It will be all the same in a hundred years!" Jill wished to know exactly how late the party would be kept up, and if there was to be a sit-down supper. "I loathe `light refreshments' like we have at breaks up. Bitter lemonade and sangwidges--who wants sangwidges? I like to sit down, and have courses, and stay as long as you like, and crackers, with things in them." When asked how she proposed to amuse the company when her turn came round, she shrugged her shoulders, and replied, "Haven't the faintest idea! Shall think of something, I suppose," in true Jill-like, happy-go-lucky fashion. Pam sat glued to the window, and kept an unerring record of everything which entered the Vanburgh house for two days before the fray. Baskets from the fruiterer's, trays from the confectioner's; mysterious paper boxes from the Stores; flowers from the florist's; they were all registered in her accurate little brain, and described at length to her sisters. "Couldn't you bring me back somefing nice?" she pleaded wistfully. "Sweets--or a cracker--or a very pretty cake with icing on it?"--and though Betty proved adamant, Jill succumbed. "What are pouches for if you can't carry things in them?" she demanded. "My party body has a huge pouch. I'll bring you samples, Pam, and if there are enough, we'll share them together!" When the great night arrived, Miles was decidedly short as to temper, but he looked so tall and imposing in his dress suit, that Cynthia's designation of "man" seemed nothing but his due. Like all male beings, he seemed to regard the behaviour of his tie and shirt front as the only things of importance in the universe, and so completely engrossed was he thereby that he had only an absent, "Oh, all right!" to return to Betty's anxious inquiries as to her own appearance.