that usually everything did "go right" at her house, although even
the maids in the kitchen, heroically attacking pyramids of sticky
plates, were not so tired as she was, when the dinner was well over.

But there was a certain stimulus in the mere thought of entertaining
Mrs. Burgoyne, and there was the exhilarating consciousness that one
of these days she would entertain in turn; so the Santa Paloma
housewives exerted themselves to the utmost of their endurance, and
one delightful dinner party followed another.

But a dispassionate onlooker from another planet might have found it
curious to notice, in contrast to this uniformity, that no two women
dressed alike on these occasions, and no woman who could help it
wore the same gown twice. Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Carew, to be sure,
wore their "little old silks" more than once, but each was secretly
consoled by the thought that a really "smart" new gown awaited Mrs.
White's dinner; which was naturally the climax of all the affairs.
Only the wearers and their dress-makers knew what hours had been
spent upon these costumes, what discouraged debates attended their
making, what muscular agonies their fitting. Only they could have
estimated, and they never did estimate--the time lost over pattern
books, the nervous strain of placing this bit of spangled net or
that square inch of lace, the hurried trips downtown for samples and
linings, for fringes and embroideries and braids and ribbons. The
gown that she wore to her own dinner, Mrs. White had had fitted in
the Maison Dernier Mot, in Paris;--it was an enchanting frock of
embroidered white illusion, over pink illusion, over black illusion,
under a short heavy tunic of silver spangles and threads. The yoke
was of wonderful old lace, and there was a girdle of heavy pink
cords, and silver clasps, to match the aigrette that was held by