had a great deal to think about, their income among other things. If
she didn't watch it, pay the bills every three months when it
arrived, her mother would never have a dollar in the gold mesh bag.
Then, lately, the dresses the elder threatened to buy were often
impossible; Linda learned this from the comments she heard after the
wearing of evening affairs sent home against her earnest protests.
They were, other women more discreetly gowned had agreed,
ridiculous.

Linda calmly realized that in this her judgment was superior to her
mother's. In other ways, too, she felt she was really the elder; and
her dismay at the possibility of going away to school had been
mostly made up of the realization of how much her mother's well-being
was dependent on her.

Mrs. Condon, finishing her dressing in the bedroom, at times called
out various injunctions, general or immediate. "Tell them to have a
taxi at the door for seven sharp. Have you talked to that little
girl in the black velvet?" Linda hadn't and made a mental note to
avoid her more pointedly in the future. "Get out mother's carriage
boots from the hall closet; no, the others--you know I don't wear
the black with coral stockings. They come off and the fur sticks to
my legs. It will be very gay to-night; I hope to heaven Ross doesn't
take too much again." Linda well remembered that the last time Ross
had taken too much her mother's Directoire wrap had been completely
torn in half. "There, it is all nonsense about my fading; I look as
well as I ever did."

Mrs. Condon stood before her daughter like a large flame-pink tulle
flower. Her bright gold hair was constrained by black gauze knotted