between age, not old enough for Edith's set, nor young enough for Ruth's. The girls I used to know in the high school have not proved to be of the fashionable society here in Hilton, and Edith won't let me have them at the house. I've drifted away from most of them, except Juliet Adams, who is doing settlement work in New York, and I can't find any one to take their place.
I've come to the sad conclusion that I'm not popular with men either. At the little dances given here in Hilton occasionally, I'm not a wall-flower, possibly because I'm Edith Vars' sister-in-law, but I'm never "rushed." I can't be very brilliant in conversation at a dance when I'm anxiously watching for some kind, charitable soul to deliver my partner from the fear of two numbers in succession with me. And I have a sneaking conviction that I don't dance very well. You see all Ruth's set "Boston" to a waltz and two-step, and I don't know how. When a man is good enough to ask me to dance it seems too bad to make him exercise until he perspires. No one knows that I don't enjoy dances very much. It looks as if I were having a good time, I suppose, but down in my heart I'm worried and afraid.
At first I used to be eagerly on the lookout for my ideal—for a fleeting glimpse of a face that resembled the picture locked away in my secret desk-drawer. But such a quest is mere nonsense. I go to Boston to shop with Edith quite often; but never, in all the trains, railroad stations, restaurants, or elevators in law-office buildings (where one runs across so many good-looking men) have I seen even once the face of my desire. Why, I searched for that
