"Aren't you coming, Syl?" Suzanne's voice called from the hall as she knocked and entered almost simultaneously, followed by Barbara.
"'The feast is set,
The guests are met.
May'st hear the merry din.'"
she chanted gayly, looking more impishly charming even than usual in her beruffled corn yellow taffeta, which set off her sparkling brunette beauty to perfection. "Do come down quick and get the hand shaking over so we can begin to dance. It is a shame to waste a moment of that heavenly music. And here's Barb just dying to get to cracking the hearts of the Greendale swains. Look at her. Behold my handiwork. She even let me apply the faintest soupçon of Nature's sweet reënforcer. Madame Delphine's Parisian Bloom. Isn't she adorable? Barbie, my child, revolve for the ladies."
"Oh, Suzanne!" The roses in Barb's cheeks needed no further reënforcement at the moment. "Do please rub it off. It's dreadful. Does it show, Sylvia? She would do it."
"Nothing shows except that you're the cunningest mite I ever laid eyes on," approved Sylvia. "Felicia, do look at her. Doesn't she look precisely like one of Marianna's dolls? In that darling white baby dress and blue sash to match her eyes, would you ever suspect her of being a Summa cum Laude and a frightfully new woman?"
"You all look new enough when it comes to that," laughed Felicia. "You haven't a notion how young you really are. Now, shoo, every one of you. I'll follow as soon as I have rounded up Donald and Marianna."
It was a rather heterogeneous assembly which met at the Hall that night, as Sylvia's parties were apt to be. The guests ranged from "Grandpa McIntosh," getting to be rather an old gentleman these days but still hale and a little crusty as became a good Scotchman, down to little Mary Lane, the youngest, shyest member of the "Hester house" family which continued to hold its hospitable doors open to those who needed a home "with some one to care" as Sylvia had stipulated from the beginning.
Marianna, still fairy-like, in spite of her eleven-year-old dignity, flitted happily among the guests feeling delightfully grown up and important, but Donald, younger and shyer, boyishly conscious of his hands and feet, slipped into unobtrusive corners save for the rare moments when he could squeeze into an empty space beside his mother.
Of course the Hill was all there, Miss Priscilla, and Miss Rosalie and Julietta feasted their eyes delightedly on Sylvia, telling every one who would listen what a very picture of her Aunt Eleanor Arden the child was, rapturously reminiscent of other days and other parties when they, too, like Arden Hall were younger than at present, and Doctor Tom and Lois were there also, rallying each other on being such old fogies that a party was an event and the new dances utterly beyond their ken.
"Hester house" was present too in full force, including Mrs. Lorrimer and all the family of girls who had the luck to be mothered by her skillful hands and warm heart. All kinds of girls they were, big and little, pretty and plain, stupid and clever, but all of the workaday world and all otherwise homeless, united by one common bond, a warm adoration for Sylvia through whom they felt themselves linked to the world of their rosiest dreams. Sylvia would no more have omitted them from her list of guests on this birthday celebration than she would have omitted the Byrds or Doctor Tom. To be of the Hill was open sesame to Sylvia's favor, and moreover these girls were every one of them her personal friends and she wanted them here for their own sakes.