Hereward the Wake was in his most magnificent mood and his eyes shone with the light of achievement. He was speaking when he turned, and the words dropped automatically even before the impish gaze of Lance.
"Knew you and named a star," quoted Mr. Symington.
"Now what on earth has that to do with the boat race?" asked Lance.
CHAPTER XIV
The First Peal
Mabel was twenty-one when her cousin Isobel Leighton came to make her home at the White House. Isobel's mother had died ten years before, and since the more recent death of her father, she had stayed for a year or two with her mother's relations. Now, suddenly, it seemed imperative that Mr. Leighton should offer her a place in his own family, since various changes elsewhere left her without a home. It was the most natural thing in the world that everybody should be pleased. The girls got a room ready for her, and took pains towards having it specially attractive. They even made plans amongst their friends for Isobel to be suitably entertained. "Though how we are to manage about dance invitations and that sort of thing, I can't think," said Jean. "It's bad enough with two girls, and sometimes no man at all. It will be awful with three."
Elma herself was on the verge of being eligible for invitations. Mabel looked as though she did not mind much. Worrying thoughts of her own were perplexing her, thoughts which she could not share with any one just then. The spring of her life had been one to delight in. Tendrils of friendship had kept her safely planted where Jean, the revolutionist, tore everything by the roots. What was not good enough for Jean immediately was had up and cast away. What had not been good enough for Jean had been their own silly enthusiasm for the Story Books. Jean in her own mind had disposed of the whole romance of this by beating Theodora at golf. She now patronized Theodora, and ignored the others. Adelaide Maud she already considered entirely passé.
The confidences of long ago were shaken into an unromantic present. The Dudgeons called ceremoniously twice a year, and invited the girls to their dances. Mabel and Jean went, occasionally with Cuthbert "cut in marble," and were inexpressibly bored in that large establishment.
"It doesn't seem to make up for other things that one sits on velvet pile and has a different footman for each sauce," Mabel declared. "We have to face the fact that the Dudgeon establishment is appallingly ugly."
So much for Mrs. Dudgeon's beaded work cushion effect.