As Lydia was disappearing docilely out of the door, her mother stopped before going back to her desk and the list of guests for the garden-party, which had been torturing her with perplexity, to say, "Oh, Lydia, don't forget to ask Marietta to order the perforated candles." "Perforated--!" said Lydia blankly, pausing at the door. "Yes; don't you remember, the last time Mrs. Hollister called here she told us all about them." "No, I don't remember," said Lydia, with no shade of apology in her tone. "Why, my dear! You're getting so absent-minded! Do you mean to say you didn't take in anything of what she was talking about? It's a new kind, that has holes running through it so the melted wax runs down the inside! Why, we were talking about them the whole time she was here that last call." Lydia opened the door, observing vaguely, "Oh, yes; I do seem to remember something. It was a very dull visit, anyhow." Mrs. Emery returned to her list, pursing up her lips and wagging her head. "You'll have to learn, dearie, that it's little details like that that make the difference between success and failure." "We have electric light and gas," said Lydia. Mrs. Emery looked up in astonishment and a little vexation. She, too, had nerves these days. "Why, Lydia, what's the matter with you? You know nobody uses those for table decoration." "_We_ could," said Lydia. "Why, my dear child, I never knew before there was a contrary streak in you, like your father. What in the world possesses you all of a sudden to object to candles?" "It's not candles--it's the idea of--Oh, all the fuss and bother, when everybody's so tired, and the weather's so hot, and it's going to cost too much anyhow." "Well, what would you have us fuss and bother about, if not over having everything nice when we entertain?" Mrs. Emery's air of enforced patience was strained. Lydia surveyed her from the hall in silence. "That's just it--that's just it," she said finally, and went away. Mrs. Emery laid down her pen to laugh to herself over the queer ways of children. "They begin to have notions with their first teeth, and I suppose they don't get over them till _their_ first baby begins to teethe." When Lydia arrived at her sister's house, she found that competent housekeeper engaged in mending the lace curtains of her parlor. She had about her a battery of little ingenious devices to which she called Lydia's attention with pride. "I've taught myself lace-mending just by main strength and awkwardness," she observed, fitting a hoop over a torn place, "and it's not because I have any natural knack, either. If there's anything I hate to do, it's to sew. But these curtains do go to pieces so. I wash them myself, to be careful, but they are so fine. Still," she cast a calculating eye on the work before her, "I'll be through by the end of this week, anyhow--if that new Swede will only stay in the kitchen that long!"