Theodore went next. He was attired in his very best clothes, and presented a fashionable appearance in a fearfully high collar and a white tie. Then the minister departed. Beatrice could hear him say to her mother in the hall, "I haven't had such delightful chills of anticipation since I took part in cane rushes at college twenty-five years ago. And I haven't the slightest idea what I'm going to do, either!" Next Beatrice heard the door close after her mother's retreating form. She peeped out of the window and noted she carried a shopping bag. "The dear," she said. "She will buy us all stockings or gloves, and declare it was a purely personal whim. But it won't be keeping to the contract if she does!" It was quite ten o'clock when Beatrice left the house. She was dressed in her best street gown, with dainty hat and gloves to match. As she closed the door behind her, Francis Lindsay was just coming out of his uncle's gate. He lifted his hat to her, and then crossed the street. "I hope Miss Billy isn't ill?" he inquired, with a shade of constraint in his manner. "I've heard, you see, of the child garden being discontinued to-day." "No, she is not ill," answered Beatrice, feeling with embarrassment the colour creeping into her cheeks. "If I could only get over this silly habit of blushing every time a stranger speaks to me," she thought angrily,--and then blushed more furiously than ever. There was nothing to do but walk along, and Francis, who evidently also was on his way down town, walked with her. He talked pleasantly, but Beatrice's replies were sadly disconnected. "He noticed me blush," she kept thinking hotly. "No doubt he is conceited enough to attribute it to his own personal charms!" She welcomed the first store as an avenue of escape, and bade him good-morning. "He has just spoiled my day," she thought, as she tossed over silk stockings and lace handkerchiefs in a flurry. "I'm always making myself ridiculous!" But the zest of shopping came back to her, and she visited store after store, looking at pretty, dainty, feminine things, feeling her money always safe in her pocket, and knowing exactly what she should be weak enough to buy in the end. But it was nearly three o'clock in the afternoon, and she was feeling tired and a little dishevelled and very hungry, before she came to the Mecca of her wanderings. It was a fashionable shoe-store, and in the very centre of the show window hung a fascinating pair of little red satin slippers, with Louis Quinze heels. Beatrice shut her eyes and grappled with temptation. "I haven't a thing that's suitable to go with them," she argued to herself. "In fact, I believe they would be out of place anywhere but in a French dressing room. But they are so sweet and dainty with their beautiful little gilt heels----"