It was not long after this that Mazie at last came home; and she lived up to the reputation that Teddy had given the Pallinders of always doing something new. Doctor Vardaman assured her gallantly that she was like the angel that came down and stirred up the Pool of Bethesda--"we were all stagnating," said the old gentleman, in his kind mock-serious manner; and Mazie smiled and lifted her eyes at him, without, I dare say, understanding in the least where or what the Pool of Bethesda was. She brought with her Miss Muriel Ponsonby-Baxter; and, following upon their arrival, Mrs. Pallinder collected her house party. Most of the young people she asked caught eagerly at the invitation; you may laugh, or perhaps jeer, but house parties were not then the affair of everyday occurrence they have since become--not in our corner of the world, certainly. We all felt, delightedly, as if we were living in an English novel--one of "The Duchess'" for choice. "You know we're going to have private theatricals in the ballroom," Mazie told everybody. "The girls and men in the house will all be in it, so we can have rehearsals any time. And papa is going to have a stage built with footlights and a curtain. We'll ask everyone, of course, and dance afterwards. I bought the favours for the german in New York coming home, you know. They're simply too sweet for any use." ("I baought the favuhs foh the juhman in New Yawhk, yuh knaow. Theah simply too sweet foh any use," was the way she said it, but I shall not attempt to reproduce Mazie's speech. It had a kind of drawling vivacity; and the final sentence was in the slang of the day--very fresh and spirited it sounded then, too!) Mazie Pallinder was not a pretty girl; she was too tall and lank; and, except when she got her cheeks touched up, too pallid with her ink-black hair. But she had a certain air of lazy distinction, helped out by a real talent for dressing herself, and an unlimited purse--maybe an unlimited indifference to bills and tradesmen would be a better way of putting it. "The first thing on the programme is to be 'William Tell,'" she said. "That's to have just men in it, you know. I think it's always best to have a lot more men than girls, and make them stand around. That's the way it is in the South, New Orleans, or Charleston, or anywhere I've ever been. You see them lined up all around the room waiting a chance, at dances, you know. All the girls have to split every waltz." Bewildering dream of bliss! Somebody, recovering from the contemplation, wanted to know what "William Tell" would be like with only men in it?