Babbie laughed. “They say what women come abroad for is to buy clothes, but I didn’t suppose men cared much about shopping over here.”
“Well, the point is that I didn’t bring over any glad rags,” Billy explained. “Didn’t expect to need any, just knocking about by myself. But I’m going to run over to Paris when Trevelyan goes—I shall have just time to see the town before the crew gets here—and the countess that his sister is visiting is going to give a dance for her just about that time. Trevelyan insists that she’ll want me to come, when she hears from him that I’m with him, and so of course I’ve got to have the proper things ready.”
“How exciting,” laughed Babbie, “to be going to a countess’s ball. Madeline has a cousin who is a viscountess, but she’s not in Paris just now, and I’m afraid that spoils our only chance of breaking into titled society.”
Meanwhile they had reached the Express Office, and John demanded his mail and received the expected missive from his father with a grin of rapture.
“Excuse me while I read this,” he said, waving it triumphantly aloft and retiring in haste to a quiet corner.
Two minutes later he was back, the letter and the smile both out of sight.
“Come on,” he said grimly. “Let’s go and drown our sorrows in tea.”
“What’s the matter?” Babe inquired sympathetically, when the party had paired off to walk to a tea-shop that Madeline knew of on Regent Street. “Wasn’t he as pleased as you thought he would be?”
“Pleased!” repeated John gloomily. “He wasn’t pleased at all. He told me in polite language that Dwight had lied about me, and insinuated that I’d put him up to it, because I wanted to get something out of my father. He says he had a very high opinion of Dwight when he hired him in the spring, but he sees now that he’s only an ‘amiable futility,’ like all the other tutors I’ve had. Then he ended by saying that when he wanted information about my mental capacity he would ask for it, and that if I couldn’t get along with the allowance we settled on when I came across, I would just have to cut down my expenses.”
“What a shame!” Babe’s voice was full of righteous indignation. “And you didn’t want any more money, did you?”