“I would have been a loser.”
“Ve-ry pretty. Really, though, we have a jolly crowd here. All complete except for Roland Cary. If Roland Cary hadn’t notions!”
“Is any man foolish enough to decline an invitation from you?”
“Any man? Oh, Roland Cary’s a cousin.”
“Lucky man! Madam, may I ask if he is so attractive that you wish he had come instead of me?”
“I wanted—wanted him to be here with you, silly. He—he is perfectly charming. You know, I’m half afraid of you. You’re such a superior old Yankee that I dare say you despise us Marylanders, and were as late in getting here as you dared to be.” The perennial challenge of the Southern belle was in her tones.
Fessenden laughed. “I ran across Danton in Baltimore. Blame it all on him.”
“Charlie Danton? Oh, isn’t he most exasperating! Now, come up and meet everybody. Boys and girls, this is Mr. Fessenden—Mrs. Randall and Dick Randall, over there. And Pinckney—Pinck, do get out of that chair long enough to be polite!—my lord and master, Tom. That’s my cousin, May Belle—May Belle Cresap—and Harry Cleborne; and this is Miss Yarnell, the celebrated Miss Madge Yarnell; and—and that’s all. How funny! I do believe I’m the only one of us you’ve ever met before.”
“That proves how benighted I’ve been,” he returned. “But what can you expect of a man who’s never been on the Eastern Shore?”
Detecting something proprietary in the manner of the young man who hung over the back of Miss May Belle Cresap’s chair, he abandoned his thought of taking a seat next that languid lady, and instead inserted himself deftly between Pinckney Cresap and Miss Madge Yarnell.