Claire quickened her pace and gained the cramped living-room. Thrown about in a sort of joyous disorder, Gertrude Sinclair's finery quite lit up the shabbiness. Hats, plumes, scraps of vivid silks, gilded slippers, a spangled fan--their unrelated vividness struck Claire as fantastic as a futurist painting. Her mother seemed suddenly young again. Claire wondered whether, after the toll of sixty-odd years, she could be moved to momentary youth by the mere sight of the prettiness that was quickening her mother's pulse. Mrs. Robson held up a filmy evening gown of black net embroidered with a rich design of dull gold. "Isn't this heavenly?" she demanded. "And it will just fit you, Claire. I think Gertrude has spread herself this time." "Yes, on finery, mother. But didn't she send anything sensible? What possessed her to load us up with a lot of things we can never possibly get a chance to wear?" Claire had not meant to be disagreeable, but there was rancor in her voice. Mrs. Robson cast aside the dress with the carelessness of a spoiled favorite; she always adapted her manner to the tone of her background. "Claire Robson!" she cried, good-naturedly. "You're a regular old woman! I'm sure _I_ haven't much to be cheerful about, but I just won't let anything down me!... If I wanted to, I could give up right now. Where would we have been, I'd like to know, if I hadn't held my head up? Goodness knows, _my_ folks didn't help me. If they had had their way, I'd been out manicuring people's nails and washing heads for a living. And _you_ in an orphan-asylum! That's what my people did for me! As it is, they shoved you out to work. What chance have you of meeting nice people? No, Claire, I don't care how they have treated me, but they might have given you a chance. I'll never forgive them for that!... I thought last night when I was talking to Mrs. Condor and watching you and Mr. Stillman how nice it would have been if.... Oh, that reminds me! Who do you think has been here to-day?... Mrs. Towne! She came to apologize about asking us to move our seats the other night. _She_ knows the Stillmans well. The old people were pillars of the Second Church in the 'sixties. I fancy he is dancing about that Mrs. Condor's heels a bit. Of course, as Mrs. Towne said, _she_ wouldn't be likely to make herself a permanent feature of Second Church entertainments. But now in war-times _anything_ is possible. Mrs. Towne was telling me all about Stillman and his wife. I _should_ have remembered, but somehow I forgot. Get your things off and I'll tell you all about it." Claire handed her mother the package of pastries. "I heard about it to-day," she said, coldly. "But Mrs. Towne knows the whole thing from A to Z," insisted Mrs. Robson, genially. "I'm not interested in the details," Claire returned, doggedly.