"You're a lucky girl to be presented at a Galt House ball!" they exclaimed presently, returning to the subject in hand. "And Cousin Effie May has really been _too_ sweet about it. Insists, simply insists that we shall all three of us stand up with her in the receiving line! Says she'd be terribly shy without us." (Joan smiled faintly at the picture of Effie May being shy.) "We said to her, 'No, my dear, one of us is _quite_ enough. We'll draw straws for it, as we always used to.' Dear papa never let all three of us go to the same party. As he said, 'It's too much of a good thing!' (Slang, you know.) But she assured us that she had three evening dresses she couldn't get into,"--it was Miss Euphemia speaking at the moment, quite unaware of any naïvété in the sequence of her remarks,--"and that it would be a real kindness on our part to take them off her hands. You know, dear, Cousin Effie May really is getting a little stout. And she says it's such a problem to know what to do with outgrown party dresses." "It certainly is!" agreed Miss Iphigenia, as if it were one that weighed upon her heavily. "You simply can't give things of that sort to the poor." "Why not?" murmured Joan, "if the poor would enjoy them?" They all rounded on her. "Why, but dear child, it wouldn't be suitable! It would give the poor ideas beyond their station. Fancy presenting a spangled net evening-gown to--Susy, say! It would never do!" "I suppose not, because she would certainly burst with joy. But think," mused Joan, "what an enviable death!" The Darcy ladies looked at her uncertainly. They were never quite sure whether their young cousin was jesting or not. They preferred people to laugh when they joked. It made things clearer. "Never mind," the girl added hastily. "Susie's not going to get these magnificent costumes, anyway!--and I am so glad you are coming to my ball, dears. We'll be a whole family of débutantes!" Afterwards she realized soberly how near her pride had come to depriving these innocent ladies of a real pleasure. Pride, she reflected, may be very close kin to selfishness. She postponed her own plans a while longer. CHAPTER XXIII These were at their best vague plans. Only one thing was definite about them. They were to include no more make-believe. Whatever came hereafter, Joan intended to be herself. The world must accept her on her own terms; in the phrase of her childhood "like her or lump her!" The difficulty was to decide just what that self might be. Hitherto it had altered obligingly to suit different situations; blowing now hot, now cold, according to the wind of circumstance. But surely underneath there was a definite entity, which did not chop and change and adapt itself, but remained Joan?