“Ow! No! Don’t!” implored the girl. “I’ll tell. But I don’t know where to begin.” “Begin in the middle,” suggested Gloria helpfully. “Then you can work both ways.” “I will. Well, then, you see, Maud’s gone and got engaged.” “To whom?” “Holcomb Lee, the illustrator.” “Why should that make you want to die? Are you in love with Mr. Lee?” “I in love with Holcomb!” Darcy’s bitter grin dismissed that supposition. “I’m not in love with _anybody_. It isn’t that.” “Then what is it?” asked the patient Gloria. “It’s the whole thing. Helen Barrett is going to marry Paul Wood.” “If any woman know any just reason why these twain should not be joined together in holy matrimony, let her now speak or forever after hold her peace,” solemnly misquoted Gloria. “But—but—but Maud and Helen and I,” pursued the girl, evincing symptoms of a melancholic relapse, “were going to be the Three Honest Working-Girls and keep up our Fifty-Sixth Street bachelor-girl hall for life. And now look at the darn thing!” “What did you expect?” argued Gloria. “Maud is pretty and energetic, and Helen is one of those soft, fluffy creatures that some man always wants to take care of. Bachelor-girl agreements are only made to keep until the right man comes along, anyway.” “But where do I come in?” demanded Darcy, opening wide her discontented-looking eyes. “Oh, you’ll be getting engaged yourself one of these days.” For once in her tactful life Gloria Greene had made a stupid remark. “Don’t you patronize me!” flashed the girl. “I just won’t stand it! I get enough of that at home from those two d—-d fiancées.” Gloria turned a face of twinkling astonishment upon her visitor. “Why, Amanda Darcy Cole! What would the generations of your Puritan forbears—” “Don’t you call me Amanda, either! It’s an old-maid name. I hate it—even if it does fit.” “It is rather a handicap,” admitted her hostess. “But Darcy’s pretty enough, anyway.” “It’s the only pretty thing about me. Oh, Gloria,” burst out the girl in a sudden flood-tide of self-revelation, “if you knew how I long to be pretty! Not beautiful, like you; I wouldn’t ask as much as that. But just pretty enough to be noticed once in a while.” [Illustration: “If you knew how I long to be pretty!”] “Why, Darcy, dear—” “No: let me talk!” Darcy proceeded in little, jerky gasps of eagerness. “Pretty. And well-dressed. And up-to-date. And smart. And everything! I’d sell my soul to the devil if he’d buy such a weakly, puny, piffling little soul, just really to live and be something besides a ‘thoroughly nice girl’ for one short year. ‘A thoroughly nice girl’! Yah!” said Miss Cole in a manner which, whatever else it might have been, was not thoroughly nice. “That’s a rotten thing to say about any one,” agreed the sympathetic Gloria. “Who calls you that?” “The girls. You know the way they say it! Well, no wonder. Look at me!” she cried in passionate conclusion to her passionate outburst.