triumph, dismissing them with a sort of unsung doxology.

And this was regarded as the last word of traction! A whip-
cracking boy on a tip horse! Oh, blind, blind! You could not
foresee the hundred and twenty electric cars that now rush madly
bumping and thundering at twenty miles an hour through all the
main streets of the district!

So that naturally Sophia, infected with the pride of her period,
had no misgivings whatever concerning the final elegance of the
princesses. She studied them as the fifteen apostles of the ne
plus ultra; then, having taken some flowers and plumes out of a
box, amid warnings from Constance, she retreated behind the glass,
and presently emerged as a great lady in the style of the
princesses. Her mother's tremendous new gown ballooned about her
in all its fantastic richness and expensiveness. And with the gown
she had put on her mother's importance--that mien of assured
authority, of capacity tested in many a crisis, which
characterized Mrs. Baines, and which Mrs. Baines seemed to impart
to her dresses even before she had regularly worn them. For it was
a fact that Mrs. Baines's empty garments inspired respect, as
though some essence had escaped from her and remained in them.

"Sophia!"

Constance stayed her needle, and, without lifting her head, gazed,
with eyes raised from the wool-work, motionless at the posturing
figure of her sister. It was sacrilege that she was witnessing, a
prodigious irreverence. She was conscious of an expectation that
punishment would instantly fall on this daring, impious child. But