"I say, mother," said Philip, her son, when he came to look over the list, "you haven't got Charley Millard down."
"Well, how can I invite Mr. Millard? He has no family."
"No family! Why, he is a descendant of old Governor Van Dam, and one of his ancestors was an officer under Wayne at Stony Point."
"Are you sure, Philip?"
"Certainly: he has pictures of Stony Point and of Rip Van Dam hanging in his room. No Revolutionary party would be complete without him."
Mrs. Gouverneur looked at Philip suspiciously; he had a way of quizzing her; but his face did not flinch, and she was greatly relieved to think she had missed making the mistake of omitting a friend with so eligible a backing. Millard was invited, rather to his own surprise, and taken into preliminary councils as a matter of course. When the introductory minuet had been danced, and the ball was at its height, Philip Gouverneur, with a smile of innocence, led his friend straight to Miss Vandeleur, who proudly wore the very dress in which, according to a rather shaky tradition, her great-great aunt had poured tea for General Washington.
"Miss Vandeleur," said Philip, "let me present Mr. Millard."
Miss Vandeleur gave Millard one of the bows she kept ready for people of no particular consequence.
"Mr. Millard is real old crockery," said Philip in a half-confidential tone. "Some of us think it enough to be Revolutionary, but he is a descendant of Rip Van Dam, the old governor of New York in the seventeenth century."
Miss Vandeleur's face relaxed, and she remarked that judging from his name, as well as from something in his appearance, Mr. Millard must have come, like herself, from one of the old Huguenot families.