"Tinting the town a chaste and delicate pink, assisted and chaperoned by his cousin, the Hon. Stephen Allardyce Poultney. Ugh! Glad the _Star_ doesn't want an interview with _His_ Geniality; don't like S.A.P. Esq.," said Cadge energetically. "But, Helen, now you've got people where you want 'em, you play your own hand. You don't want any Van Dam for a bear leader. That crowd's been working every fetch there is to get in with the top notchers, and they just couldn't. Knowing you is worth more to them than endowing a hospital. You're a social bonanza." Perhaps I shouldn't have let her talk so about Meg, but, after all, she told me nothing new. "Did I send you a marked paper with the paragraph I wrote about the important 'ological experiments you couldn't leave, even for the 'land of the lily and the rose?'" she proceeded. "Don't wonder you didn't want to go to Bermuda, everything coming so fast your way. I crammed your science into the story because it's good advertising. Don't really study at Barnard now, do you? I wouldn't; would you, Kitty?" Her white, mobile face gleaming with animation, Cadge declaimed upon one of her thousand hobbies:-- "What's women's science good for but dribbling essays to women's clubs? If some 'Chairwoman of Progress' were to grab off the Princess, does it take science to give 'em 'Fresh Evidence that Woman was Evolved from a Higher Order of Quadrumanous Ape than Man?' We all know what the clubs want, and if they get it, they'd vote any one of us as bright a light as Haeckel.--Pros., you saved any clippings for the Princess?" Pros. gave me a quantity of articles about my beauty cut from out-of-town and foreign papers. I believe I'll subscribe to a clippings bureau. I hadn't thought of that. I stayed and stayed; it was so pleasant in the eyrie; but when at last I rose to go, Kitty sighed:-- "Why, you've only been here a minute, and in that gorgeous dress, you're like a real Princess, not my chum. I shall suggest a court circular--'The Princess Helen drove out yesterday attended by Gen. Van Dam.'--'Her Serene Highness, Princess Helen, honoured the Misses Reid and Bryant last evening at a soiree.'--leaded brevier every morning on the editorial page. Oh, Nelly, can't I have your left-off looks? A homely girl starves on bread and water, while a pretty one wallows in jam." "Princess must be wallowing in wealth," said Cadge, inspecting my evening dress; "suspect she didn't dress for us; it's Opera night. Stockholders share receipts with you? Beauty show in that first tier box must sell tickets." "Wish they would divide; I'm as poor as a church mouse," I said, laughing. I didn't go to the Opera, though the girls had cheered me up until I hurried home prepared to do Meg's bidding; but she had gone--angry, I suppose--and I didn't follow.