THE OTHER GIRLS




CHAPTER I.

SPILLED OUT.


Sylvie Argenter was driving about in her mother's little
basket-phæton.

There was a story about this little basket-phæton, a story, and a
bit of domestic diplomacy.

The story would branch away, back and forward; which I cannot, right
here in this first page, let it do. It would tell--taking the little
carriage for a text and key--ever so much about aims and ways and
principles, and the drift of a household life, which was one of the
busy little currents in the world that help to make up its great
universal character and atmosphere, at this present age of things,
as the drifts and sweeps of ocean make up the climates and
atmospheres that wrap and influence the planet.

But the diplomacy had been this:--