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piece on the debutante ball, now swollen beyond recognition from the old-fashioned tea party to introduce one's grown daughter to the tight little world of one's closest friends and relations, to a supper dance of a thousand guests under a marquee, and another article on society's switch of summer preference from the lake to the ocean. She had developed her own wit and style, and Evelyn Byrd, the editor in chief, had taken her twice out to lunch. She was, as Polly put it,
lancée.

    "We've been a bit heavy lately on great houses and gardens," Polly now pointed out. "I think our readers would like something on how these estates can be converted to the needs of the next generation. To something smaller, of course, but smarter. Less grand but also less pompous. Your mother-in-law, so to speak, in ballet slippers."
    "What a picture! But yes, I think I see it."
    Polly's job had matured her. As an assistant society editor, her scope was sufficiently vague to allow her to stick a fanciful finger into other departments, and she had shown a creative imagination that her former preoccupation with the minutiae of social observances had hidden. That Clara was married while Polly was still single—and married so well—had reversed their old positions. The Miltons' Hispano Suiza was barely a memory now.
    Clara went right to work on Polly's idea and motored one of the magazine's top photographers down to Long Island to take pictures of the interior of the gatehouse. He became highly enthusiastic about the project and snapped the big house and the gardens as well. It was while he was doing the latter that he was observed by the head gardener, who reported the fact to Mr. Hoyt. Clara had spoken of her article to her husband, who had manifested no objection, and she had not seen fit to seek the permission of his parents. That weekend, while Trevor was on the golf course and she was spending a morning sorting out the photographer's proofs, Mr. Hoyt walked down the drive to call on her.
    "What is your project, my dear?" he asked her, picking up one of the proofs from the porch table. "Are you designing a Christmas card? This would make a fine one for Charlotte and me." He exhibited a shot of the front facade of his house.
    "Well, you can have it, of course. But my project is something better than that." And here she explained to him the nature of her article.
    His long gray countenance at once took on a grayer look. "You mean that these pictures would appear in a newspaper?"
    "Not in a newspaper. In a magazine. In
Style.
Surely you know about
Style.
It's where I work."
    "A women's periodical? No, I don't know it. I read
Fortune
and
Forbes,
but that's about it. And I'm afraid I cannot allow any pictures of this place to be published."
    "Oh, Mr. Hoyt! Why not?"
    "There are several reasons, but one should suffice. There is enough discontent already in the country over what radicals call economic injustices without inflaming public jealousy further with pictures of large Long Island estates. I am sorry, but I cannot allow it."
    "But, Mr. Hoyt, it's a matter of my career!"
    "Well, I'm afraid, my dear, that you will have to adjust your career to the exigencies of the family business. You can hardly expect to raise your daughter, Sandra, and the little brother or sister we all hope you and Trevor will soon give her on an editor's salary. Of course, if your employers have gone to any expense in this matter, I'll be glad to make them whole."
    "Oh, it's not that." Clara paused, appalled at this sudden blockage of what she had been beginning to hope would be a breakthrough in her career at
Style.
She had been conceiving all kinds of sociological undertones in her piece; the reconstructed gatehouse would become the symbol of a much deeper conversion of the old principles of laissez-faire. It suddenly seemed to her that her father-in-law constituted an obstruction that had to be cleared away now or never.
    "Oh, please make an exception for me, Mr.