Nobody knew how anybody got dressed for the party, and certainly nobody took any dinner to speak of. It was laid in the morning-room, and Mr. Leighton said throughout that roystering meal that never again, no matter how many ribs Cuthbert broke or how much sympathy he excited, would he allow them to have a party.

The occasion became memorable, not only because of Cuthbert or the mayonnaise, or the Dudgeons, but because on that night Robin Meredith appeared. Mabel and Jean lately had already in quite a practical manner begun to wonder whom Mabel would be obliged to marry. Jean was getting very tall, and showed signs of being so near the grown-up stage herself, that she was anxious to see Mabel disposed of, so as to leave the way clear.

"The eldest of four ought to look sharp," she declared; "we can't allow any trifling."

This seemed rather overwhelming treatment of Mabel, who was only seventeen. But viewed from that age, even a girl of twenty-one is sometimes voted an old maid, and Mabel was quite determined not to become an old maid.

"There seems to be only George Maclean," she had sighed in a dismal way. She was quite different from Elma, who continually dreamed of a duke. George Maclean would do very well for Mabel, only, as Jean complained, "George Maclean is a gentleman and all that kind of thing, but he has no prospects." So they rather disposed of George Maclean, for immediate purposes at least. Then came Mr. Meredith. After that, in the language of the Leightons, it was all up with Mabel. She would simply have to get engaged and married to Mr. Meredith.

Mr. Meredith was of middle height, with rather a square, fair face, and a short cut-away dark moustache. He spoke in a bright concise sort of way, and darted very quick glances at people when addressing them. He came in with the Gardiners, and after shaking hands with Mrs. Leighton he darted several quick glances round the room, and then asked abruptly of Lucy Gardiner "Who was the tall girl in white?"

Here was the point where the fortunes of the Leighton girls became at last crystallized, concrete. It is all very well to dream, but it is much pleasanter to be sure that something is really about to happen.

None of this undercurrent was noticeable, however, in the general behaviour of that imaginative four. They began the evening in a dignified way with music. Every one either sang or played. Jean in her usual hearty fashion dashed through a "party piece." Even Elma was obliged to play the Boccherini Minuet, which she did with the usual nervous blunders.

As Dr. Harry placed the music ready for her, she whispered to him, "Whenever I lift my heels off the floor, my knees knock against each other."

"Keep your heels down," said Dr. Harry with the immobile air of a commanding officer.

Elma found the piano pedals, and in the fine desire to follow out Dr. Harry's instructions played Boccherini with both pedals down throughout.

"How you do improve, Elma!" said May Turberville politely.

And Elma looked at her with a mute despair in her eyes of which hours of laughter could not rid them. If only they knew, those people in that room, if only they knew what she wanted to play, the melodies that came singing in her heart when she was happy, the minor things when she was sad! All she could do when people were collected to stare at her was to play the Boccherini Minuet exceedingly badly. The weight of "evenings" had begun already to rest on Elma. Her undoubted gifts at learning and understanding music brought her into sharp prominence with her teachers and family, but never enabled Elma to exhibit herself with advantage on any real occasion.

It was all the more inexplicable that Mabel could at once dash into anything with abandon and perfect correctness. Technique and understanding seemed born in her. In the same way could she, light-heartedly and gracefully, take the new homage of Mr. Meredith, who made no secret of his interest in her from the first moment of entering the drawing-room. Mabel received him as she received a Sonata by Beethoven. With fleet fingers she could read the one as though she had practised it all her life; with dainty manners she seemed to comprehend Mr. Meredith from the start, as though she had been accustomed to refusing and accepting desirable husbands from time immemorial. It put her on a new footing with the rest of the girls. They felt in quite a decided way, within a few days even, that the old, rather childish fashion of talking about husbands was to be dropped, and that no jokes were to be perpetrated in regard to Mr. Meredith. It began to be no fun at all having an eligible sister in the house.

On this night, however, they were still children. About forty young people, school friends of themselves and Cuthbert, sustained that gaiety with which they had begun the afternoon. Even the musical part, where Mr. Leighton presided and encouraged young girls with no musical talents whatever to play and sing, passed with a certain amount of lightness. Before an interlude of charades, a strange girl was shown in. She giggled behind an enormous fan, and made a great show of canary-coloured curls in the process. She seemed to have on rather skimpy skirts, and she showed in a lumbering way rather large shiny patent shoes with flat boys' bows on them.

There was a moment of indecision before Betty broke out with the remark, "You might have had the sense to hide your feet, Lance."

The canary-coloured curls enabled Lance to look becomingly foolish. In any case, Mr. Leighton could not prevent the intellectual part of the evening from falling to bits. They had no more real music. Instead, they fell on Lance and borrowed his curls, and made some good charades till supper time.

"I can't help feeling very rocky about that supper," whispered Jean to Mabel. "Yet we've everything--sandwiches, cake, fruit and lemonade, tea and coffee. What can go wrong now?"

"Oh! the thing's all right," said Mabel, who was in a severely exalted mood by this time.

They trooped into the dining-room, where girls were provided in a crushy way with seats round the room, and boys ran about and handed them things. Mrs. Leighton gave the head of the table to Mabel, who sat in an elderly way and poured coffee. The salad was magnificent. Aunt Katharine had come in "to look on." Mrs. Leighton told her how Mabel had arranged forty-two plates that morning, with water-lily tomatoes cut ready and chopped chicken in the centres, and had nearly driven Cook silly with the shelves she used for storing these things in cool places.

"Wherever you looked--miles and miles of little plates with red water lilies," said Mrs. Leighton. "It was most distracting for Cook. I wonder the woman stays."

"What a mess," said Aunt Katharine. "You spoil these girls, you know, Lucy."

"Oh--it's Mr. Leighton," said she sadly.

"I don't think mayonnaise is a very suitable thing for young people's parties," said Aunt Katharine dingily.

By this time the white cake with "Cuthbert" in pink was handed solemnly round. Every person had a large piece, it looked so good.

Every one said, "Walnut, how lovely," when they took the first bite.

Every one stopped at the second bite.

"Cuthbert," called out Mrs. Leighton after she had investigated her own piece, "I notice that your father has none of the cake. Please take him a slice and see that he eats it."

Mr. Leighton waved it away.

"I do not eat walnuts," said he.

Mrs. Leighton went to him.

"John, this is not fair, this is your idea of a party," she said. "You ought to eat Cuthbert's cake."

"He can't," cried Jean; "nobody can. It's only Mabel who likes iced marbles."

"You will all have to eat gingerbread," said the voice of Betty hopefully.

Jean started up in great indignation with a large battered-looking "orange iced cake" ready to cut.

"Betty always gets herself advertized first," she complained. "Please try my orange icing."

They did--they tried anything in order to escape Mabel's walnuts. It occurred to the girls that Mabel would be quite broken up at the wretched failure of her wonderful cake--the Cuthbert cake too. It was such a drop from their high pedestal of perfection. Even mummy, who had been so much on her own high horse at all their successes, now became quite feelingly sorry about the cake. She gave directions for having the loose pieces collected and surreptitiously put out of sight, but the large dish had to remain in front of Mabel. Mabel was still charmingly occupied over her coffee cups. She poured in a pretty direct way and yet managed to talk interestedly to Mr. Meredith. He was invaluable as a helper.

"And now, at last," said she in a most winning manner, "you must have a slice of my cake. I baked it myself, and it's full of walnuts. Don't you love walnuts?"

"I do," said Mr. Meredith.

May Turberville nudged Betty, and Lance stared open-mouthed at the courage of Mabel. He would do a good deal for the Leighton girls, but he barred that particular cake. An electric feeling of comprehension ran round the company. They seemed to know that Mabel was about to taste her own cake and give a large slice to Mr. Meredith. They made little airy remarks to one another in order to keep the conversation going, so that Mabel might not detect by some sudden pause that every one was watching her. One heard Julia Gardiner say in an intense manner to Harry Somerton that the begonias at Mrs. Somerton's were a "perfect dream." And Harry answered that for his part he liked football better. Even Mr. Leighton noticed the trend of things, and stopped discussing higher morality with Aunt Katharine.

Mabel seemed to take an interminable time. She gave Mr. Meredith a large piece, and insisted besides on serving him with an unwieldy lump of pink icing containing a large scrawly "e" from the last syllable of Cuthbert's name.

"E--aw," brayed Lance gently, and Betty exploded into a long series of helpless giggles.

"What a baby you are, Lance," said Mabel, amiably laughing. She bit daintily at the walnut cake.

Mr. Meredith bit largely.

There was an enormous pause while they waited to see what he would do.

Cuthbert and Ronald Martin were near, aimlessly handing trifle and fruit salad. Mr. Meredith helped with one hand to pass a cup.

"You know, Leighton," he said, "I have a great friend, he was one of your year--Vincent Hope--do you remember him?"

Cuthbert stared. One mouthful was gone and Mr. Meredith was cheerfully gulping another.

"What a digestion the man has," he thought, and next was plunged politely in reminiscent conversation regarding his College days.

Mabel sat crunching quite happily at the despised walnut cake.

Lance approached her timidly.

"For Heaven's sake," he said, "give me a large cup of coffee for the ostrich. The man will die if he isn't helped."

"Who on earth do you mean, Lance?" asked Mabel innocently.

"Meredith. Don't you see he has eaten the cake."

Mabel looked conscience-stricken. Her own slice had not dwindled much.

"It is rather chucky-stoney, isn't it?" she asked anxiously.

"It's terrific," said Lance sagely.

Mabel looked quite crushed for a moment, so crushed that even Lance's mischievous heart relented.

"Never mind, Mabel," he comforted her. "If Meredith can do that much for you without a shudder, he will do anything. It's a splendid test."

A golden maxim of Mrs. Leighton's flashed into Mabel's mind, "You never know a man till he has been tried." It made her smile to think that already they might be supposed to be getting to know Mr. Meredith because of her villainous cake.

"The piece we tested wasn't so bad," she explained to Lance, quite forgetting that she had skimmed that quantity in order to get plenty of chopped walnuts into the "real" cake.

A few people in the room seemed fearfully amused, and poor Mabel in an undefined manner began to feel decidedly out of it. Lance went about like a conspirator, commenting on the appearance of "the ostrich." He approached Cuthbert, asking him in an anxious manner how long the signs of rapid poisoning might be expected to take to declare themselves after a quadruple dose of walnut cake. Mr. Meredith unruffled, still handed about cups for Mabel.

Jean was in a corner with her dearest friend Maud Hartley.

"Isn't it wonderful what love can do?" she remarked quite seriously. It was a curious thing that Elma, who dreamed silly dreams about far-away things, and was despised for this accordingly by the robust Jean, did not become romantic over Mr. Meredith at all. She merely thought that he must be fearfully fond of walnuts.

The supper was hardly a pleasure to her--or to Betty. Every dish was an anxiety. They could almost count the plates for the different courses in their desire to know whether each had been successfully disposed of. There was no doubt about the trifle.

"What a pity Mabel didn't make it," sighed Jean. After all, Mabel had only inspired the chicken salad, and even there Dr. Harry had made the mayonnaise.

"It isn't much of a start for her with Mr. Meredith," she sighed dismally, "if only we hadn't told anybody which was which."

Mr. Meredith took a large amount of trifle, praising it considerably.

This alarmed Lance more than ever.

"One good thing does not destroy a bad thing," he exclaimed. "The first axiom to be learned in chemistry is that one smell does not kill another. It is a popular delusion that it does. Meredith seems to have been brought up on popular lines."

He posed in front of Cuthbert with his hands in his pockets.

"We are running a great risk," said he. "To-morrow morning Meredith may be saying things about your sisters which may prevent us men from being friends with him--for ever."

Above the general flood of conversation, Aunt Katharine's treble voice might now be heard.

"Mabel," she said in a kind manner, "I must compliment you. When your mother told me about this ridiculous party, I told her she was spoiling you as she always does. In my young days we weren't allowed to be extravagant and experiment in cooking whenever a party occurred. We began with the 'common round, the daily task.'" Aunt Katharine sighed heavily. "But I never knew you could make a trifle like this."

Mabel had been sitting like the others, trying to subdue the merriment which Aunt Katharine's long speeches usually aroused. The wind-up to this tirade alarmed her however. She would have to tell them all, with Mr. Meredith standing there, that the trifle was not her trifle. She would have to say that it was Betty's.

Before she could open her mouth however, the whole loyal regiment of Leightons had forestalled her.

"Isn't it a jolly trifle!" they exclaimed. Mabel could even hear Betty's little pipe joining in.

"Oh, but I must tell you," she began.

Cuthbert appeared at the doorway.

"Drawing-room cleared for dancing," said he. "Come along."

That finished it, and the girls were delighted with themselves. But one little melancholy thing, for all her partisanship, disturbed Jean considerably. Mr. Meredith, on giving his arm to Mabel for the first dance, was heard distinctly to remark, "You make all these delicious things as well as play piano! How clever of you."

And Mabel looking perfectly possessed floated round to the first waltz as though she had not made a complete muddle of the walnut cake.

Jean did not regret their generosity, but she was saddened by it.

"It all comes of being the eldest," she confided to Maud, "We may stand on our heads now if we like, but if anything distinguished happens in the family, Mabel will get the credit of it."