For Mahala’s birthday each of them must have a new dress. No hands but those of Elizabeth were sufficiently dainty and painstaking to make them, so that weeks of hemming fine ruffles, of whipping on lace, of setting insertion, of placing bows and looping draperies were necessary. For this particular birthday Elizabeth had done an unprecedented thing. She had accidentally clothed her small daughter in a combination purely French. The gold of the girl’s hair was nearly the same shade as the tarlatan she had selected for her party dress. She had ruffled and trimmed it to the crest of the prevailing mode. She had combined with it little running wreaths of leaves that were exactly the blue of Mahala’s eyes, yet they turned to silver in oblique light rays. Finally, she had smashed on to it here and there, exactly as a French modiste would have done, big, soft bows of black velvet ribbon. A pair of black velvet shoes with the toes brightly embroidered with blue daisies, brought to Mahala by her father on his return from a recent trip to New York, had probably suggested the bows and had been saved for the party, while a wreath of the blue leaves had been kept to bind down the silky curls hanging free, so that Mahala, thus attired, was probably as beautiful a picture as could be made with a child of her age. The night of her party she stood beside her father and mother, quite as composed, as much at ease, as they, till the last of her guests had arrived. She was watching her mother carefully as certain faces appeared in the doorway. When Mrs. Spellman’s lips narrowed and Mr. Spellman’s eyebrows arose, Mahala made a point of darting out of line and offering both hands. She doubled in warmth her welcome for every child that she knew would receive only half a welcome on the part of her father and mother. There was always a guilty feeling in her heart when she invited certain children she knew were not wanted, not welcome in her home. She realized that the day was going to come speedily when her mother would say: “You may invite so many guests and not one more.” On that uncomfortable day she would be forced to make a decision. The decision she would make would not be pleasing to her father and mother. To-night she thought fleetingly, merely realizing that there was a day of conflict coming.