"You see that you were mistaken. If I had been you I wouldn't have given them the awful opportunity."
"What awful opportunity?" queried Pauline, furtively bristling.
"Of coming," said Courtlandt.
"My dear Pauline," here broke in Mrs. Poughkeepsie, "shall you not present anybody to us?"
"Anyone whom you please to meet, Aunt," responded Pauline.
"But, my dear, we please to meet anyone. We have no preferences. How can we have?"
"This is torment," thought poor Pauline. She glanced toward Courtlandt, but she might as well have appealed to one of her chairs. "What shall I do?" her thoughts sped fleetly on. "This woman and this girl would shock and repel whomever I should bring to them. It would be like introducing the North Pole and the South."
But her face revealed no sign of her perplexity. She quietly put her hand within Courtlandt's arm. "Come, Court," she said, with a very creditable counterfeit of gay sociality, "let us find a few devotees for Aunt Cynthia and Sallie."
"We shall find a good many," said Courtlandt, as they moved away. "Have no fear of that."
"I am by no means sure that we shall find any," protested Pauline, both with dismay and antagonism.