Four girls at the west end of a town dreamed dreams about four girls at a still further west. They lived where the sun dropped down behind blue mountains in the sunny brilliant summer time. The Story Book Girls were grown up, of "county" reputation, and "sat in their own carriages." The others invariably walked. This was enough to explain the fact that they never met in the quiet society of the place. But one world was built out of the two, and in it, the younger girls who did not ride in carriages, created an existence for the Story Book Girls which would have astonished them considerably had they known. As it was, they sometimes noticed a string of large-eyed girls with a good-looking brother, going to church on Sunday, but it never dawned on one of them that the tallest carried a heliotrope parasol in a manner familiar to them, nor that another exhibited a rather extraordinary and highly developed golfing stride. Grown-up girls do not observe those in the transition stages, and just at the fiercest apex of their admiration, the Leightons were certainly at the transient stage. They reviewed their own growing charms with the keenest anxiety. Everybody was hopeful of Mabel who seemed daily to be shedding angularities and developing a presence which might one day be compared with Adelaide Maud’s. The time of her seventeenth birthday had drawn near with the family palpitating behind her. Mrs. Leighton remembered that delicious period of her own youth, and was indulgently friendly, "just a perfect dear." "We are going to make a very pretty little woman of Mabel," she informed her husband. He was a tall man, with a fine intellectual forehead, and handsome, clear-cut features. He stooped slightly, giving an impression of gentleness and great amiability. He answered in some alarm. "You don’t mean that our little baby girl is growing up." "Elma declares that Mabel reaches her ’frivolity’ in May," said Mrs. Leighton sedately. A quiet smile played gently over a face, lined softly, yet cleared of care as one sees the mother face where happy homes exist. Mr. Leighton groaned sadly and rubbed his finger contemplatively along the smoothed hair which made a gallant attempt at hiding more than a hint of baldness. "Why can’t we keep them babies!" "Betty thinks we do," said his wife. "One boy at College, and one girl coming out! It’s overwhelming. We were only married yesterday, you know," said poor Mr. Leighton. It troubled Mrs. Leighton that Mabel insisted on wearing heliotrope. She had white of course for her coming out dress, and among other costumes the choice of colours for a fine day gown. The blue eyes of the Leightons were gifts handed down by a beneficent providence through a long line of ancestors, and one wise mother after another had matched the heavenly radiancy of these wide orbs as nearly as possible in sashes and silks for the children. Therefore Mrs. Leighton begged Mabel to have at least that one day gown in blue.