"I begin to be sorry I said you might have what you liked," she said dismally. "Heliotrope will make you look like your grandmother." "Oh no it won’t," clamoured Jean. "It will only make her look like Adelaide Maud." "Traitor," was the expression on three faces. Sporting Jean had really rather a dislike to the garden-party smartness of Adelaide Maud, and occasionally prejudice did away with honour. "I’m joking," she said penitently. "Do let her wear heliotrope, mummy." Mrs. Leighton sighed amiably yet disappointedly, but at last gave Mabel permission to wear heliotrope. They had patterns from Liberty’s and Peter Robinson’s and Woolland’s in London, and a solid week of rapture ensued while Mabel saw herself gowned in a hundred gowns and fixed on none. They sat over the patterns one day with Mrs. Leighton in attendance. Mabel’s choice lay between fifteen different qualities of heliotrope. "I shall have this," she said one minute, and "No, this" the next. "Patterns not returned within ten days will be charged for," quoted Jean. Just then a certain rushing sound of light wheels could be heard. Each girl glanced quickly out of the window. The clipity-clop of a pair of horses might be clearly distinguished; and through the green trees skirting the bottom of the garden, appeared patches of colour. Two Story Book Girls drove past, Adelaide Maud and Theodora. Theodora was sitting in any kind of costume--what did _her_ costume matter? Adelaide Maud was in blue. The girls gazed breathlessly at one another. "I think you must really now make up your mind," said Mrs. Leighton patiently, whose ears were not attuned so perfectly to distinction in carriage wheels. Mabel glanced round for support. "Oh, mummy," said she very sweetly, "I do believe you were right. I shall have blue after all." That was a few weeks before the great day when Mabel attained her "frivolity" and put up her hair. Cousin Harry’s being with them gave an air of festivity to the occurrence, and curiously enough, Mrs. Leighton’s drawing-room filled with visitors on that afternoon as though to celebrate the great occasion. Throughout her life Elma never forgot to link the delight of that day, when for the first time they all seemed to grow up, with the despair of her sallies in Cousin Harry’s direction. When she did trail back to the drawing-room, crushed yet educated, she found Mabel with carefully coiled hair standing in a congratulatory crowd of people, looking more like Adelaide Maud than one could have considered possible. "Such excitement," whispered Jean, "Mrs. Maclean has brought her nephew and he knows the Story Books." It put immediate thoughts of having to explain to Cousin Harry out of Elma’s mind. "Oh, do you know," she said excitedly to him, "I want one thing most awfully. I want to know Mr. Maclean so well in about five minutes as to ask him a fearfully particular question."