out of breath, she paused.

Which among two or three possible frocks should she wear for the party
to-night? What sort of party was it going to be anyhow? It was curious,
considering the fact that they had done nothing but sit and talk all the
morning, how vague her ideas about it were. Her father had said
something out in the car about having a few old friends in for dinner.
Paula was going to sing and professed herself frightened by the
prospect. Also she had cited it as the reason for an unusually and
almost strenuously unoccupied day. On the other hand it was keeping Aunt
Lucile distractedly busy.

Was it the chance result of their preoccupation with other things that
she had been given no more intelligible account of it, or was it
something that all three of them, her father, Paula and Aunt Lucile, were
walking round the edge of? The nub of some seriously trivial quarrel? Was
that why Paula was so elaborately disengaged and Aunt Lucile so
portentous? Was it even perhaps why her father had so abruptly fled this
morning without coming into the house?

She treated this surmise kindly. It was something to think about anyhow;
something to sharpen her wits upon, just as a cat stretches her claws in
the nap of the drawing-room rug. She rescued from oblivion half a dozen
remarks heard during the morning, whose significance had gone over her
head, and tentatively fitted them together like bits of a picture puzzle.
She hadn't enough to go on but she believed there was something there.
And when a little later in the afternoon, she heard, along with a knock
on her door, her aunt asking if she might come in, she gave her an
enthusiastic welcome, scooped an armful of things out of a chair and
cleared a sitting space for herself at the foot of the bed.