The slim, tender-coloured fabrics, charming even though unoccupied, hung weightlessly upon small, shoulderlike shapes of nickeled wire; and as she restlessly slid the hangers to and fro along the groved central rail that held them, she produced a delicate swish and flutter among the silks and chiffons before her, so that they were like a little pageant of pretty ghosts of the dances to which their young mistress had worn them. Lily approved of none of them, however; and, hearing her mother’s firm step approaching the open door of the room, behind her, she said, desperately, without turning, “I haven’t got a thing, Mamma; I haven’t got a single thing!” Mrs. Dodge, that solid matron, so inexplicably unlike her daughter, came into the room breathing audibly after an unusually hurried ascent of the stairs. “Lily,” she said, in the tone of one who still controls an impending emotion, “Lily, you must never do this to me again. I can’t stand it.” “Do what to you again?” Lily inquired, absently, not turning from her inspection. “I haven’t got a thing I could wear to-morrow night, Mamma. Absolutely, I don’t see how I can go unless——” “_Lily!_” Mrs. Dodge exclaimed in a tone so eloquently vehement as to command a part of her daughter’s attention. “Listen to me!” Lily half turned, holding forth for exhibition a dress she had removed from its hanger. “What’s the matter, Mamma? This pale blue chiffon is absolutely the only thing I haven’t worn so often I just couldn’t face anybody in again; but it never _was_ a becoming——” “Lily, put down that dress and listen to me!” “I’m sure it won’t do,” the daughter said, regretfully; but she obeyed and hung the dress over the back of a chair. Then she turned to her dressing-table mirror and began to remove her small hat. “Are you upset or anything, Mamma?” “Upset? No! I’m indignant,” Mrs. Dodge explained, fiercely. “If you ever do such a thing to me again——” “What? Why, I haven’t even seen you since lunch time, Mamma. How could I have been doing anything to you when I wasn’t anywhere around to _do_ it?” “You know well enough what you did to me! You broke three separate engagements with three separate——” But Lily’s light laughter interrupted. “Oh, did the poor things call up?” she asked, and seemed to be pleasantly surprised. “Well, my not being here might be doing something to _them_, maybe,” she added, reflectively;—“but I don’t see how it was doing anything to _you_, Mamma.” “You don’t? You break three separate engagements without a word, and leave me here to explain it; and then you say that wasn’t doing anything to me!” “But I didn’t leave you to do it. I didn’t even know you were going to be home this afternoon. I just thought maybe they’d call up and find I was out, and that’d be the end of it. What in the world did you go to the telephone _for_, Mamma?” “Because two of them asked for me.” “Did they? What for?”