Persis looked at Connie. She could not understand how she could be so very different from the others. “For she is,” decided Persis. “Oh, dear, I wish they’d let us go up-stairs by ourselves!” But, Miss Imogene having left the room, Miss Oriana kept up the conversation, relating all sorts of gossip, and evidently considering herself most agreeably entertaining.
“There’s Bud,” cried Miss Oriana. “I hear his latch-key.” And in a moment a young man entered. He was quite young,—not more than nineteen or twenty,—and was dressed in the style described as “loud.” His entrance brought with it an overpowering odor of cheap perfume mixed with bad tobacco, and to Persis, who loathed such a combination, this was almost sickening.
“He has the manner of a floor-walker in a third-rate dry-goods shop,” thought Persis. “Oh, dear, why did I come?” She hardly heard what young Stewart was saying, and waited anxiously the summons to supper, which was presently made by means of a clanging bell, rung vigorously by Imogene.
The meal was good, plentiful, and well cooked, and hungry Persis appreciated this fact. “Now, if Connie and I can only go up-stairs and be alone after supper, I shall not mind it so much,” she thought. But she at once remembered that it was Connie’s first evening at home, and of course she would want to remain with the family. Hearty laughter and unlimited jesting made the meal a merry one. Immediately after they all again adjourned to the drawing-room, where they were joined later by a party of young people from the neighborhood, themselves as frolicsome as the Stewarts.
Mr. Bud sang variety songs with more vigor than melody, while Oriana pounded out an accompaniment upon the piano, with her foot on the loud pedal. Then followed a romping game in which Bud insisted upon receiving a kiss as a forfeit, while Persis, with all her dignity so defied, vehemently protested.
“Bud likes the girls,” laughed Mrs. Steuart, to whom her guest finally appealed. And Persis, with one wild look around, fled from the room followed by Connie. As she sank, sobbing, upon the first chair she found in the nearest room her friend began to apologize.
“Don’t, Persis,” she said. “Bud didn’t mean any harm.”
“I don’t care,” replied Persis, between her sobs. “I won’t stand such things. I can’t help it, Connie, if he is your brother.”
“He isn’t,” Connie answered, hesitatingly. “They don’t like me to say so, but he is only my step-brother. He is used to romping about with the girls who come here; he had no idea of offending you. I’ll go down and tell him that you are really angry.”
“No, don’t do that. Just let me stay up here, and then they can have their game without me.”