"Please forgive me," the note ran, "if I accept Rosamond's invitation
for the very reason that might seem to oblige me to decline it. I see
you have two days' advantage of her, and she will no doubt lose some
of the girls by that. I really _heard_ hers first. I wish very much it
were possible to have both pleasures."

That was being terribly true and independent with West Z----. "But
Leslie Goldthwaite," Barbara said, "always was as brave as a little
bumble-bee!"

How it had come over Rosamond, though, we could not quite understand.
It was not pique, or rivalry; there was no excitement about it; it
seemed to be a pure, spirited dignity of her own, which she all at
once, quietly and of course, asserted.

Mother said something about it to her Saturday morning, when she was
beating up Italian cream, and Rosamond was cutting chicken for the
salad. The cakes and the jellies had been made the day before.

"You have done this, Rosamond, in a very right and neighborly way, but
it isn't exactly your old way. How came you not to mind?"

Rosamond did not discuss the matter; she only smiled and said, "I
think, mother, I'm growing very proud and self-sufficient, since we've
had real, _through-and-through_ ways of our own."

It was the difference between "somewhere" and "betwixt and between."

Miss Elizabeth Pennington came in while we were putting candles in the
bronze branches, and Ruth was laying an artistic fire in the wide