"Did you know I was asked to the Juniors this year?" she said to Susan one night.
"The Juniors! You weren't!" Susan echoed incredulously. For the "Junior Cotillion" was quite the most exclusive and desirable of the city's winter dances for the younger set.
"Oh, yes, I was. Mrs. Wallace probably did it," Josephine assured her, sighing. "They asked Anna last year," she said bitterly, "and I suppose next year they'll ask Betts, and then perhaps they'll stop."
"Oh, but Jo-why couldn't you go! When so many girls are just CRAZY to be asked!"
"Money," Josephine answered briefly.
"But not much!" Susan lamented. The "Juniors" were not to be estimated in mere money.
"Twenty-five for the ticket, and ten for the chaperone, and a gown, of course, and slippers and a wrap--Mother felt badly about it," Josephine said composedly. And suddenly she burst into tears, and threw herself down on the bed. "Don't let Mother hear, and don't think I'm an idiot!" she sobbed, as Susan came to kneel beside her and comfort her, "but--but I hate so to drudge away day after day, when I know I could be having GORGEOUS times, and making friends---!"
Betts' troubles were more simple in that they were indefinite. Betts wanted to do everything, regardless of cost, suitability or season, and was quite as cross over the fact that they could not go camping in the Humboldt woods in midwinter, as she was at having to give up her ideas of a new hat or a theater trip. And the boys never complained specifically of poverty. Philip, won by deep plotting that he could not see to settle down quietly at home after dinner, was the gayest and best of company, and Jim's only allusions to a golden future were made when he rubbed his affectionate little rough head against his mother, pony-fashion, and promised her every luxury in the world as soon as he "got started."
When Peter Coleman returned from the Orient, early in April, all the newspapers chronicled the fact that a large number of intimate friends met him at the dock. He was instantly swept into the social currents again; dinners everywhere were given for Mr. Coleman, box- parties and house-parties followed one another, the club claimed him, and the approaching opening of the season found him giving special attention to his yacht. Small wonder that Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's caught only occasional glimpses of him. Susan, somberly pursuing his name from paper to paper, felt that she was beginning to dislike him. She managed never to catch his eye, when he was in Mr. Brauer's office, and took great pains not to meet him.