the tall blonde girl, isn't she?"

She was very happy. He had not seemed to find her too young or
particularly immature. He had asked her opinion on quite important
things, and listened carefully when she replied. She felt, though,
that she knew about one-tenth as much as he did, and she determined
to read very seriously from that time on. Her mother, missing
her that afternoon, found her curled up in the library, beginning
the first volume of Gibbon's "Rome" with an air of determined
concentration, and wearing her best summer frock.

She did not intend to depend purely on Gibbon's "Rome," evidently.

"Are you expecting any one, Elizabeth?" she asked, with the frank
directness characteristic of mothers, and Elizabeth, fixing a date
in her mind with terrible firmness, looked up absently and said:

"No one in particular."

At three o'clock, with a slight headache from concentration, she
went upstairs and put up her hair again; rather high this time to
make her feel taller. Of course, it was not likely he would come.
He was very busy. So many people depended on him. It must be
wonderful to be like that, to have people needing one, and looking
out of the door and saying: "I think I see him coming now."

Nevertheless when the postman rang her heart gave a small leap and
then stood quite still. When Annie slowly mounted the stairs she
was already on her feet, but it was only a card announcing: "Mrs.
Sayre, Wednesday, May fifteenth, luncheon at one-thirty."