So it came about quite naturally that the little unknown cousin of the Melroses was made a familiar figure in their different family groups, and friends of the house grew accustomed to finding pretty little Norma Sheridan lunching with Leslie, reading beside Alice's couch in the late summer afternoons, or amusing and delighting the old head of the family in a hundred charming ways. Norma called Mrs. Melrose "Aunt Marianna" now, as Chris and Acton did. She did not understand the miracle, it remained a marvel still, but it was enough that it continued to deepen and spread with every enchanted hour. She had longed--what girl in Biretta's Bookstore did not?--to be rich, and to move and have her being "in society." And now she had her wish, a hundred times fulfilled, and of course she was utterly and absolutely happy. That is, except for the momentary embarrassments and jealousies and uncertainties, and for sometimes being bored, she thought that she might consider herself happy. And there were crumpled rose-leaves everywhere! she reminded herself sternly. She--Norma Sheridan--could spend more money upon the single item of shoes, for example, than Miss Smith, head of Biretta's Bookshop, could earn in a whole long year of hot months and cold, of weary days and headachy days. That part of it was "fun", she admitted to herself. The clothes were fun, the boxes and boxes and boxes that came home for her, the petticoats and stockings, the nightgowns heavy with filet lace, and the rough boots for tramping and driving, and the silk and satin slippers for the house. Nothing disappointing there! Norma never would forget the ecstasies of those first shopping trips with Aunt Marianna. Did she want them?--the beaded bag, the woolly scarf, the little saucy hat, were all to be sent to Miss Sheridan, please. Norma lost her breath, and laughed, and caught it again and lost it afresh. They had so quickly dropped the little pretence that she was to make herself useful, these wonderful and generous Melroses; they had so soon forgotten everything except that she was Leslie's age, and to be petted and spoiled as if she had been another Leslie!