"How about Christmas eve?" inquired the latter inflexibly.
"You tiresome old dear, the Settlement has a tree and I'll attend it, and spend the night with one of my class who is interested there."
"Then I'll go," agreed Roxana mildly. "Fled is the rosy dream of sleeping till noon and watching you skate in the afternoons; and I will ask Mrs. McCabe across the hall to keep an eye on you."
The invitation came as a welcome event to Philip Sidney as well. Aunt Isabel had been uniformly kind and motherly to him. The thought of a solitary Christmas, or one spent in a glittering restaurant, made him wince even with all the allurements of his easel and his books; so at last Mrs. Fabian received a grateful reply to a dinner invitation.
The roses that came with his card on Christmas morning pleased her also, more than her extravagant gifts. While Phil was dressing he thought again of Kathleen. He had never seen her since the Sunday afternoon visit. He felt he could put up with Edgar's airs and graces through a dinner for the sake of seeing Kathleen again.
"I wonder if she'll smoke a cigarette to-night," he thought, while he adjusted the dress tie he had bought for the occasion: adjusted it very carefully, for the tie was a unique possession. If he made a botch of it he could not go to the dinner. The girl never came to his mind except when her mother spoke of her; but now that he was to be her guest he recalled agreeably how womanly and sweet had been her manner to Eliza on that autumn day before the stable had turned into a studio.
It was Kathleen who suggested sending the car for Violet. It was not the traditional Christmas of dry sparkling snow under a radiant moon, but a day of slush and clouds, and Kathleen was not of those owners of motors who believe that every one else has one, too. Her acquaintance with Violet was slight, but she knew she was a teacher and a very young one. She fancied that dollars were precious with her as yet.
So Violet rolled up to the brown-stone house on Christmas evening in state, arrayed in her best and full of anticipation. Mrs. Wright's gift to her had been a small gold pendant holding a turquoise matrix, and this she wore on a slender chain around her throat, where it shone between the deep blue of her eyes and the pale blue of her gown.
Kathleen's greeting to her had a ring of friendliness through its gentle formality. Violet's involuntary thought was that she might have been less formal, for, although there was nothing chilling in her manner, it seemed to suggest the difference between the bachelor maid doing light housekeeping in a hemmed-in apartment and the heiress of this stately mansion.
Mrs. Fabian was kindly patronizing, and held Violet at her side that she might meet the other dinner guests.