"Not quite, Dora. I'll own, though, I would if I could; but there's such
a lot of us at home that the money gives out before it goes all 'round,"
said Tilly, frankly, yet rather ruefully.

"I'm sure you look very nice," said Dora, politely. Amy echoed the
polite remark, while Will, eying the three with an attempt at a critical
estimate, thought to himself, "They don't look a bit nicer than that
girl at the corner table."

But Will was too wise to give utterance to this thought. He knew how it
would be received; he knew that the three would laugh at him and say,
"What does a boy know about girl's clothes?"

In the mean time, while all this was going on, what was that girl who
had suggested the talk, that girl who sat at the corner table in the
dining room and who was now lying in a hammock,--what was she doing,
what was she thinking?




CHAPTER II.


She was lying looking up through the green branches of the trees. She
had been reading, but her book was now closed, and she was lying quietly
looking up at the blue sky between the branches. Her thoughts were not
quite so quiet as her position would seem to indicate. She had, as Will
Wentworth had said, heard all that talk about the Pelhams. Whatever her