Camilla looked on, resignedly, her fingers playing with the
loosened masses of her glossy black hair. Each was following in
silence the idle drift of thought which led Camilla back to her
birthday party.

"Twenty!" she said still more resignedly--"four years younger than
you are, Ailsa Paige! Oh dear--and here I am, absolutely
unmarried. That is not a very maidenly thought, I suppose, is it
Ailsa?"

"You always were a romantic child," observed Ailsa, digging
vigorously in the track of a vanishing May beetle. But when she
disinterred him her heart failed her and she let him scramble away.

"There! He'll probably chew up everything," she said. "What a
sentimental goose I am!"

"The first trace of real sentiment I ever saw you display," began
Camilla reflectively, "was the night of my party."

Ailsa dug with energy. "_That_ is absurd! And not even funny."

"You _were_ sentimental!"

"I--well there is no use in answering you," concluded Ailsa.

"No, there isn't. I've seen women look at men, and men look back
again--the way _he_ did!"