"He spoke to me when he first came—but—I really don't recollect—it must be Mr.—Mr.——"
"Arend Van Voorst," crushingly put in Mrs. Allston, with somewhat the effect of a garden-roller. Both of the older ladies looked interested.
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Thorne, "I sent him a card when I heard he was in Boston. I have not seen him—at least since he was very young—but his mother—of course I know Mrs. Van Voorst—a little."
"I don't know them at all," said Miss Morgan; "but if that's young Van Voorst, he is better looking than there is any occasion for."
"He was a classmate and intimate friend of Jack's," said Mrs. Allston, loftily.
"I never saw him before," said Lily, incautiously.
"He only went out in a very small set in Boston," said Mrs. Allston. "I met him often, of course."
"You were too young, Lily, to meet any one when he was in college," said Miss Morgan, who liked "putting down Julia Allston."
"It's too bad the girls are all engaged," said the simple-minded Mrs. Freeman; "he won't have any partner."
"He wouldn't dance!" said Julia, too tough to feel Miss Morgan's light touches. "Very likely, as you asked him, Mrs. Thorne, he may feel that he must take a turn with Ada; and when he knows that Kitty Bradstreet is with me, very likely he will ask her out of compliment to me. He will hardly ask me to dance at such a very young party as this; I don't see any of the young married set here but myself."