"Oh, dear me, neither! Nothing so commonplace. They have taken a house just on the Avenue (they say it is a dream within), and you have to write for an appointment, and then if they will consider you at all they write back and set a time, and you go exactly as if you were calling, you know, and you are received by either Maud or Dita or both. Then you come again whenever they tell you, and all the time Dita is studying you just as a portrait painter would. Finally, when she feels that she has you thoroughly in mind, and is quite decided about the way you shall be clothed, she has designs made for you of hats and gowns, little water colors, you know, and sends you to her dressmaker. She also has your maid come and dress your hair before her, according to her directions. And it costs you!" Alice Wilstead pursed her mouth and lifted her brows, "It costs you! Oh, like the dickens!"
"Who is that?" said Mrs. Hewston turning.
"Only me," Wallace Martin replied modestly and ungrammatically, entering, as usual, unannounced, a privileged friend of the family, and greeting the two women with his usual barking cheerfulness.
"I just walked up home with that pretty little Lolita Withers, and, as you were only a block or two farther, I came on here."
The two women gazed at each other with a long, wondering stare. "Lolita Withers!" they exclaimed simultaneously. "Pretty!" Nothing could have been more eloquent than their tones.
"My dear Wallace," said Mrs. Hewston, finding her voice, "is this some new joke? Are you quite sane?"
"He means it for a joke," said Mrs. Wilstead, who had been peering at him curiously. "He is going in for eccentricity, or else the success of his play has gone to his head."
"Not a bit of it," replied Martin with unmoved smiles. "Lolita Withers is at present an obviously pretty girl. Any one would so consider her."
"Obviously pretty." Mrs. Wilstead had found her tongue by this time, and acrid and scoffing it proved. "That skinny, ineffective little Lolita Withers! Dull-eyed, anæmic, with stooping shoulders and wispy light hair."
"She looks like a dream of spring," said Wallace, helping himself lavishly to tea and cakes. "A sort of an evanescent beauty. Truly, yes," he affirmed, "she's been to Maud Carmine and Perdita Hepworth." He gave a great burst of laughter.