"I should think not," said Elizabeth, sitting up and straightening her hat. She was now quite at her ease, since the lady was proving so delightfully sympathetic. "I am afraid I'm not truly genteel, or I shouldn't have bolted at my first sight of high life." "How will you feel when you have been to hundreds of such affairs, all exactly alike, I wonder?" asked the lady wearily. Elizabeth shook her head. "I couldn't stand it. My aunt thinks I need the refining influence of good society, but it doesn't seem to have had that effect upon me," she added rather mournfully. The lady laughed again. "Well, as receptions go, it seemed to me a very pretty one indeed, and Miss Raymond is a beautiful girl." "Oh, Stella's lovely," cried Elizabeth enthusiastically, "and everything is just grand, far more splendid than anything I ever saw before. You see, I never was at anything but a High School tea or something of that sort," she added artlessly. "But the refreshments made me ill; really, I was quite sick." The lady looked both amused and interested, and Elizabeth rattled on: "You see, I got my ice-cream in a mould--a little chicken; what was yours?" "A rose, I think--some sort of flower." "Oh, that would be lovely!--to eat a rose. But mine was a chicken, and before I thought I cut his poor little pink head off with my spoon. And it reminded me of the day when we were little and my brother John made me hold our poor old red rooster while he chopped his head off with the ax, and of course it made me sick, and I just had to run away." "You mustn't let your imagination play tricks with your digestion that way." "It shows that the refined part of me must be just a thin veneer on the outside," said Elizabeth, her eyes twinkling. "I don't believe my insides are a bit genteel, or I'd never have thought of the rooster." "Well, you are a treat," said the lady--"Miss--Miss--why, I don't even know your name, child." "It's Elizabeth Gordon," said the owner of the name, adding with some dignity--"Elizabeth Jarvis Gordon." "Elizabeth Jarvis Gordon!" repeated the lady, half-rising, an expression of pleasure illuminating her face, "Why--surely, my little namesake! Don't you remember me?" "Oh," cried Elizabeth, overwhelmed by the memory of her indiscretions. "It isn't--is it--Mrs. Jarvis?" "It really is!" cried the lady very cordially. She drew the girl down and kissed her. "And I'm delighted to meet you again, Elizabeth Jarvis Gordon, you're the most refreshing thing I've seen in years!" CHAPTER XIV WHEN LIFE WAS BEAUTY