CHAPTER VII.
TOGETHER The end of June and of the house party at Roya-Neh was now near at hand, and both were to close with a moonlight fete and dance in the forest, invitations having been sent to distant neighbours who had been entertaining similar gatherings at Iron Hill and Cloudy Mountain--the Grays, Beekmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts.
Silks and satins, shoe buckles and powdered hair usually mark the high tide of imaginative originality among this sort of people.

So it was to be the inevitable Louis XVI fete--or as near to it as attenuated, artistic intelligence could manage, and they altered Duane's very clever and correct sketches to suit themselves, careless of anachronism, and sent the dainty water-colour drawings to town in order that those who sweat and sew in the perfumed ateliers of Fifth Avenue might use them as models.
"The fun--if there's any in dressing up--ought to lie in making your own costumes," observed Duane.

But nobody displayed any inclination to do so.

And now, on hurry orders, the sewers in the hot Fifth Avenue ateliers sewed faster.

Silken and satin costumes, paste jewelry and property small-swords were arriving by express; maids flew about the house at Roya-Neh, trying on, fussing with lace and ribbon, bodice and flowered pannier, altering, retrimming, adjusting.