cried, laughing. "I wish my hair were like that. It looks perfectly dear
whatever you do with it, and mine's only pretty when it's been put just
right."

"It certainly was put just right to-night then," said a third voice, and
Rosamond, Stephen's wife, appeared in Roberta's half-open door. "May I
come in? Steve hasn't come up yet, and I'm so comfortable in this loose
thing I want to sit up a while and enjoy it."

Rosamond looked hardly older than Roberta; there were times when she
looked younger, being small and fair. Ruth considered her quite as much
of a girl as either herself or Roberta, and welcomed her eagerly to the
discussion in which she herself was so much interested.

"Rosy," was her first question, "did _you_ think our guest was bored
to-night?"

"Bored?" exclaimed Mrs. Stephen in surprise. "Why should he be? He
didn't look it whenever I observed him. And if you had seen him when the
trio was playing you wouldn't have thought so. By the way, he has an eye
for colour. He noticed how your frock and Rob's went together in the
candle-light, with the harp to give a touch of gold."

"Did he say so?" cried Ruth in delight.

"He asked if the colour scheme was intentional. I said I thought it
probably was--on your part. Rob never thinks of colour schemes."

"Neither does any _man_," murmured Roberta from the depths of the hair
she was brushing with an energetic arm. "Unless it happens to be his