“Don’t mention it—charming woman—charming,” murmured Beverly, politely.
“I’m sure I don’t know who she can be,” went on Billy; “unless she was on the list of people my mother sent me to invite. I know I never asked her. Are you walking down that way?” he ventured, casually. Somehow or other, Cousin Marguerite seemed to him to belong as much to Beverly as to himself.
“Certainly not,” answered the other, with decision. “I shall sit here until it’s time to catch the midnight train.”
“And not go to the Tree or Beck or the Yard in the evening?”
“I have spoken,” said Beverly, placidly.
“Well, then, good-bye.” Billy held out his hand, “And don’t forget you’re coming to us on the tenth.” He looked troubled, and left reluctantly to find his cousin.
Beverly, true to his word, sat there fanning himself, and listening to the faint music of the band in the Yard, all the afternoon. From time to time, men dashed in to leave or get tickets, to eat something, or to find some one who never was there. They always said:—
“You here on Class Day, Beverly? I thought you weren’t going to stay.” Then they would rush out into the heat again to find their families and take them to the Tree. Occasionally fellows brought their fathers in to see the club and rest awhile. It amused Beverly to watch the “infants” do the honours. Prescott—six feet two—saying, “What’ll you have, Papa?” to a nice, little, old bald-headed thing, was almost as irresistible as Prescott père, when he patted his head with his handkerchief and replied, apologetically:—
“The day has been so fatiguing, and we have so much more to do later on, that I think I should like a little, a very little, rye whiskey and water.”
Sears Wolcott, followed by an astonishingly young-looking gentleman who might have been Sears’s older brother, if he hadn’t happened to be his father, was characteristic when he remarked indifferently:—