"Um," Chrystie pondered, "I suppose you must. Oh, there's Marquis de Lafayette." "Yes," said Lorry, "I thought of him." Chrystie's eyes, bright with question, rested on her sister. "You can't exactly call him a nugget." "Why not?" "Because he doesn't shine, darling." This explanation appeared to strike its maker as a consummate witticism. She fell back on the bed in spasms of laughter. Lorry looked annoyed. "He's nicer than any of the others, I think." "Of course he is, but he's been buried too long in the soil; he needs polishing." She rolled over on the bed in her laughter. Lorry began to braid her hair, her face grave. "I don't think things like that matter a bit, and I don't see at all what you're laughing at." "I'm laughing at Marquis de Lafayette. I can't help it--something about his hands and his manners. They're so ponderously polite; maybe it's from waiting on table in the students' boarding house." "I never knew you were a snob before, Chrystie." "I guess I am. Isn't it awful? Oh, dear, I've laughed so much I've got a pain. It's perfectly true, I'm a snob. I like my nuggets all smooth and shiny with no knobs or bits of earth clinging to them." Lorry's hair was done and she rose and approached her sister. "You've spoiled my bed. Get off it and go." But Chrystie would not move. With her face red and the tears of her laughter standing in her eyes she gazed at the serious one. "Lorry, darling, you look so sweet in that wrapper with your hair slicked back. You look like somebody I know. Who is it? Oh, of course, the Blessed Damozel, leaning on the bar of Heaven, only it's the bar of the bed." "Don't be silly, Chrystie. Get up." "Never till I have your solemn, eternal, sworn-to promise." "What promise?" "To give that party." "You have it--I said I'd do it and I will." "And get nuggets for it?" "Yes." "All right, I'll go." She sat up, rosy, disheveled, her hair hanging in a tousled mop from its loosened pins. Catching Lorry's hand, she squeezed it, looking up at her like an affectionate, drowsy child. "Dear little Blessed Damozel, I love you a lot even though you are high-minded and think I'm a snob." She had been in her room for some minutes, Lorry already in bed with a light at her elbow and a book in her hand, when she reappeared in the doorway. The pins were gone from her hair and it lay in a yellow tangle on her shoulders, bare and milk-white. Looking at her sister with round, shocked eyes, she said: "It's just come to me how awful it is that two young, beautiful and aristocratic ladies should have to hunt so hard for nuggets. It's tragic, Lorry. It's _scandalous_," and she disappeared. Lorry couldn't read after that. She put out the light and made plans in the dark. The next day she rose, grimly determined, and girded herself for action. In the morning, giving Fong the orders, she told him she was going to have a dinner, and in the afternoon went to see Mrs. Kirkham.