Mr. Van Silver’s Brewster coach was a glorious affair. It was painted canary yellow. The four horses were perfectly matched roans. The grooms were in liveries of bottle-green coats with white breeches and top boots faced with yellow. Mr. Van Silver wore a light-coloured overcoat, and the lap robe was of white broadcloth. All the brass about the harness had been burnished till it shone like gold. Mrs. Roseveldt and Milly sat beside him on the box. Mrs. Roseveldt wore a Paris costume of white cloth with Louis XVI jacket with velvet sleeves and vest heavily embroidered in gold. A little bonnet formed of gold beads fitted her aristocratic head like a coronet. Milly was bewitchingly pretty in a fawn coloured shoulder cape, and a pancake hat piled with yellow buttercups. She seemed, as Adelaide said, cut out of a piece with her surroundings. Adelaide and I occupied the back seat, with Little Breeze beside us in the place which had been intended for Winnie. Little Breeze wore a simple spring suit and I had only one best gown—a gray cashmere; but Adelaide made up for our simplicity. Her dress was not very expensive, but Milly’s exclamation that it was “too exasperatingly, excruciatingly becoming” will give an idea of its effect. It was a white foulard, sprigged in black and caught here and there with black velvet bows; there was a vest of fluffy white chiffon, and her hat was trimmed with white marabout pompons powdered with black. The costume was her own design, executed by Miss Billings. She carried a cheap white silk parasol, made to look elaborate by a cover constructed from an old black lace flounce.
“Papa has forbidden me ever to enter Celeste’s rooms again,” Milly said to Adelaide; “and I am sure if Miss Billings can make me look as recherché as you do, she is good enough for me.”
“I seem fated never to meet Miss Winnie,” Mr. Van Silver said as he started.
“She is to visit us during the summer,” said Mrs. Roseveldt, “and you must come out to the Pier and see her.”
“You are very good, but I am going to take my coach over to the other side this summer. My mother is visiting at the castle of the Earl of Cairngorm and wants me to take a lot of people for a coaching trip through the Scottish Highlands.”
“How many of our friends are going to Europe in the summer,” Adelaide remarked. “Professor Waite told me he intended to return to France for a term of years, and Tib here is going over to study——”
“I’m afraid not,” I replied doubtfully.
“Oh, yes you are,” Milly insisted; “that will all come out right.”
“What a lovely day for the games,” Mrs. Roseveldt remarked. “What is your favorite school, Milly? Columbia, Berkeley, Cutler, Morse? Oh! yes, I remember—the cadets. But where is your badge? I see that Miss Armstrong and Miss Smith wear theirs quite conspicuously, and Mr. Van Silver, too, has decorated his whip and the coach horn with the cadet colours.”
“Adelaide has a brother among the cadets, which accounts for her preference,” Milly replied evasively; “but I don’t see why I should prefer them to any other school.”