day girls didn't admit they loved a man until he asked it."
"In your day girls lied about it, mother."
"Sally."
"Oh, well, I mean that they let concealment prey on their damask cheeks and that sort of thing. We moderns know that suppression of emotion is fatal. That's why I talk about my feelings. I haven't proposed to Merry yet, but I may if I don't say things first to you and Sarah."
Mrs. Hulburt's eyes went to the doll. "I don't see why you like her."
"Don't you?"
Sally had a fleeting wish that her mother wore caps and had a mid-Victorian mind. She felt this morning as if she needed the stimulus of sternness and rigidity. Her mother would scold a bit, but in the end would be that smoothing, feather-bed softness of heart which got nobody anywhere, and meant nothing. Yet at the moment Mrs. Hulburt was trying to do her best.
"I want you to be happy, Sally."
"I know," Sally said, and flung a hand up across her eyes. She sobbed in a dry, gasping fashion.
Mrs. Hulburt bent over her. "My dear, do you really care like that?"
"Oh, mother, I care like the—dickens—" And the thing was not funny, but tragic.
Yet, two hours later, when Sally went down for dinner, she was clothed and in her right mind, and as saucy as ever. After dinner all the young people went for a walk in the snow, and came back to have tea in the drawing-room, rosy with its lights.
