CHAPTER V
MISS KENDRICK'S PLEASURE
"I suppose it's my uncle you want to see, so I'll be going," said Miss Kendrick in her piquant voice. She had been reading as I was ushered into the library, and now stood, book in hand, in a graceful attitude of meditated flight.
"If you please," I said, "it's not your uncle I want to see. I want to ask a favor of you."
"A favor? Of me? Well, I hope it has nothing to do with the Bellinger ball, for I'm trying to invent an excuse for not going." And Miss Kendrick tilted her nose and looked defiantly at me.
"I had no idea such an atrocity was in contemplation," I said. "What I want is some advice."
"Oh, how delightful!" cried Miss Kendrick, sinking into her chair and motioning me to a seat. "I always did dearly love to give advice. It's such fun, for nobody ever follows it, and I can always tell them how much better things would have turned out if they had. But I never had anybody come and ask for it before." There was a sarcastic note in her piquant voice that made me wonder, after all, whether I liked it.
"Now you are making sport of me," I said.
"Not at all. I am quite serious, and shall listen with all my ears. Who is she, and what is the difficulty?"
"Cherchez la femme--I see you have learned your proverbs. She's a little heathen and I forgot to ask her name, and--"