CHAPTER VII.
TWO PICNICS.
T was while Candace was still doing battle with her shyness, sometimes getting the better of it and then again yielding and letting it get the better of her, that Georgie and Gertrude sent out invitations to another luncheon party of girls. It was the third they had given since coming to Newport. Mrs. Gray certainly did a great deal for the pleasure of her daughters, although Berenice Joy did consider her so "strict."
Candace had her share in this entertainment, as one of the three young ladies of the house. The party was mainly composed of the "Early Dippers," who were not as formidable to her imagination as entire strangers would have been. She and Georgie and Gertrude wore their white woollen dresses, which were almost exactly alike, and "looked like triplets," as Marian rather spitefully observed. Marian herself was not asked to the party, and was out of humor in consequence. Her crossness did not extend to Candace, however. She evinced this by coming in just as Candace had finished dressing, with a long-stemmed pink rose in her hand, which she pinned on the shoulder of the white gown, just under Candace's cheek.
"That looks sweet," remarked Marian. "I am really quite pleased at your appearance; you're every bit as pretty as Gertrude, and heaps better looking than that old Georgie, who wouldn't let me come to her party. Now, take my advice: hold your head up, and don't let any of the girls bully you. If Berry Joy tries it, sit down hard on her."
"I don't know how to sit down hard," laughed Candace; but she kissed Marian for the sweet rose, and went downstairs feeling quite brave. Marian watched her over the balusters; made a face at Berry Joy, who was just sailing into the drawing-room; shook her dimpled fist at Georgie's back, visible through the open door; and then went to sit with her mother, who also was "not invited."
There is no prettier entertainment than a lunch-party of girls. The flowers, the confections, all the graceful little fripperies of the feast, seem to suit with the bright young faces, to whom daylight is a becoming and not a dangerous test. Frederic had taken great pains in ornamenting the table for his young ladies. There was a nosegay for each guest, and no two nosegays were alike. One was made up of roses and daisies, another of roses and heliotrope, another of roses and violets; and each was tied with a satin ribbon of corresponding color, which had the name of the girl for whom it was intended, and the date, painted in gold letters on the ends. In the middle of the table stood a large square pan of glass, in which floated a mass of waterlilies, pink and white; and winding in and out among the little dishes of crystallized fruits, éclairs, apricots, and hot-house grapes, was a continuous curving wreath of pansies of every color. It appeared to lie directly on the white tablecloth; but the stems of the flowers were really set in shallow semi-circles of tin, not over half an inch high, which were filled with wet sand.