“And October is _awfully_ near! I’ll never dare show my face again,” wailed Darcy. “Oh, I don’t know,” returned the other reassuringly. “If it were your old face, now, you might be justified in not wanting to show it. Faces change, and we change with ’em, as the prophet says.” “It wasn’t the prophet, and he didn’t say that, anyway. He said, ‘Times change, and—” “—and faces change with ’em, worse luck!” supplied the actress cheerfully. “Though all of ’em don’t change for the worse. Darcy, how much do you weigh?” she demanded with an abrupt change of tone to the business-like. “One hundred and twenty-eight and a half, as I go on the gym floor.” “That’s good enough. ‘The time has come,’ the walrus said, ‘to talk of many things; of shoes, and shirts, and chemisettes, of hats and eke _stockings._’” “Clothes!” cried Darcy, her eyes sparkling. “Clothes. Are you prepared, in the sight of heaven and earth, to spend seven or eight hundred of Aunt Sarah’s hard-earned on a trousseau?” “Oof! Don’t say trousseau to me! It reminds me. Apart from that—try me!” “All right. What are you going to do tomorrow at three?” “Cover Central Park lengthwise and back in the even hour. Andy’s orders.” “Far be it from me to interfere. Make it the day after at ten o’clock in the morning. Meet me at my place. We’ll have a sartorial orgy.” That night Darcy dreamed herself a princess. CHAPTER VIII SELFISHNESS,” says that wise and happy and altogether radiant person, Gloria Greene, “comes from lack of vitality. Most people haven’t enough capital stock of vigor to live on comfortably. So you can’t expect them to loan or give away any in the form of thoughtfulness for any one else. They’re paupers, poor things! The bankruptest person I ever knew had eighty thousand a year, and nothing else.”