"Has your aunt been speaking to you?"
"Uh, huh! I don't want any dinner. Good Lord, they'll ask me to make a speech!"
Mary smiled for the first time in hours.
"Of course," said Bill, uncomfortably, "I promised to do better and all that sort of thing, and I don't want to break my word. But a dinner—oh, gee!"
"I don't favor the dinner idea myself," said Mary.
"But it looks like Aunt Caroline was all set for it. What's the answer?"
Mary laid her gloves on the desk and removed her hat.
"It seems to me," she said, "that the thing to do is to go out of town for a while."
Bill looked at her with a hopeful expression.
"You see, Mr. Marshall, the town season is really over. Most of the worth-while people have left the city. It's summer. There will be nothing of importance in society before the fall; nothing that would interest you, at any rate. So I would advise doing exactly what the other people are doing."