"Mixed?" suggested Joan. "I remember you called me 'mixed' the first time you deigned to notice me."
"Not the first time—the second," laughed Emily, blushing. "The first time was on the train, and you had flowers and a box of candy, and I hadn't.—The second time you were such a haughty little minx, with your Eastern airs and your lovely clothes, and so utterly unaware of my provincial existence, that I simply had to snub you somehow!"
"Well!" gasped Joan. "That is exactly the way I felt about you!"
"And there we were bristling our hackles at each other like two strange puppy dogs, each waiting for the other to wag a tail. Anyway, I wagged first!" cried Emily, kissing her friend. "And I'm not going to lose you now, simply because my family hasn't been polite to your family."
"You couldn't!" said Joan rather shyly, kissing her in return....
As a result of this understanding, some days later the cards of both Judge and Mrs. Jonathan Carmichael appeared on the Darcy hall table (from which they were not removed until gray with age and exposure); to be followed by an even more unequivocal bit of pasteboard which informed Mrs. and Miss Darcy that Mrs. Carmichael would be at home on a certain afternoon in April from four until six.
Effie May's innocent joy in this trophy, and the frequency with which it figured in subsequent conversations, filled Joan with a combination of embarrassment and satisfaction. She felt that she had at last done something to repay, in part, the obligation she owed to her father's wife....
She was not surprised to find Archibald at Emily's dinner. It was the first time she had seen him under quite such a strong social light, however, and she was a little nervous as to what the evening might bring forth. "The Sign of the Dirty Spoon," did not sound like the most reliable school of table manners.
He sat opposite her, between Emily and a débutante of the type that makes conversation an act of supererogation, and she was able without seeming to do so to keep her protégé under a watchful eye.
But to her relief he neither swallowed his spoon nor grasped his fork with undue firmness, and seemed not at all perturbed by the variety of the silver implements beside his plate. Joan was quite mystified by his prowess; until she happened to notice that Emily also had him under a watchful eye. With each course Emily promptly and ostentatiously selected the proper implement, and Archie, after one glance out of the corner of an eye, followed suit. It was perhaps fortunate that Emily was his leader instead of the more impish Joan, who would have been impelled by sheer force of circumstance to attempt her fish with her coffee spoon.