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but after her shop was closed, she made her toilet with extra care; chose gloves, shoes, and parasol to match her frock; and then looking at herself in the glass, exclaimed in some dismay, “I am dressed up. I might be going to the races, or a garden party!” And to her greater dismay, on her arrival with Stephanie in the car, she found that she was going to a party.

“This is one of Granny’s jokes,” said pretty Stephanie, smiling at her. “The party is for me, and for you—you’ll see it in the ‘Social Notes’ of tomorrow’s paper—and you’ll find everything you’re wearing chronicled, and chronicled wrong.”

It was too late to escape, Ann realized. And it would be a poor return for all Mrs. Ford’s kindness to treat her so rudely. The only thing to do was to face it bravely. So with her head held high, and a flush that made her look younger and sweeter than ever, Ann walked up the veranda steps. Only one or two guests had arrived as yet. These were the intrepid spirits who always anticipated the hour specified for an “afternoon tea” in Wairiri. “So horrid to be late,” they said; and so they got to the house very often while the flurried hostess was putting the last touches to the heavily-laden tea-table in the dining-room, or—in the absence of a cook—taking the last batch of cakes out of the oven. Mrs. Ford introduced Ann to these early birds.

“I’m giving this little party for Stephanie and Miss Merrill, you know. I want her to meet all our friends in Wairiri. It’s so lonely for a girl here if she doesn’t know every one. And Miss Merrill has been so enterprising, and has such sweet things in her hat shop. Haven’t you been to see them? Oh, but you must go. This I’ve got on is one of her models, and Stephanie’s