"All hooked up straight?" asked Rachael. "That gown looks rather well."
"Do you good women realize what time it is?" Miss Breckenridge asked, by way of reply.
"Has she got it a shade too short?" speculated Rachael, thoughtful eyes on the girl's dress.
"Well--I was wondering!" Carol said eagerly, flinging down her wrap, to turn and twist before a door that was a solid panel of mirror. "What do you think--we'll dance."
"Oh, not a bit," Rachael presently decided. "They're all up to the knees this year, anyway. Car come round?"
"Long ago," said Billy, and Elinor, reaching for her own wrap, declared herself ready. "I wish you were going, Rachael," the girl added as she turned to follow their guest from the room.
"Come back here a moment, Bill," Mrs. Breckenridge said casually, seating herself at the dressing-table without a glance at her stepdaughter. For a moment Miss Breckenridge stood irresolute in the doorway, then she reluctantly came in.
"You're just seventeen, Billy," said the older woman indifferently. "When you're eighteen, next March, I suppose you may do as you please. But until then--either see a little less of Joe Pickering, or else come right out in the open about it, and tell your father you want to see him here. This silly business of telephoning and writing and meeting him, here, there, and everywhere, has got to stop."
Billy stared steadily at her stepmother, her breath coming quick and high, her cheeks red.
"Who said I met him--places?" she said, in a seventeen-year-old-girl's idea of a tragic tone. Mrs. Breckenridge's answer to this was a shrug, a smile, and a motherly request not to be a fool.