“All right,” Stacey replied as he rose to take his leave; “so long as you don’t talk with Miss Milly. She would think it a put-up job between us.”
“Now it was real vexatious in Stacey to say that,” Jim remarked, after his friend had left. “I meant to have it out with Miss Milly the next time I saw her. Won’t you wrestle with her, Adelaide?”
“I’m afraid it’s of no use,” Adelaide replied, but Jim would not give up the idea so easily. He talked it over with Mrs. Roseveldt, who approved of the tennis tournament. It would be just the thing with which to open the season. The Cadet team would be a great attraction. She would intercede with Colonel Grey to allow them to remain several days. “It must take place early in June,” she said, “just after Milly’s commencement exercises, and while Adelaide and you are visiting us, before your father and mother return and take you away. I will drop a line to Milly that I want her to come home for my last reception this season, and I’ll invite Stacey to talk it over.”
Jim was afraid that Milly might not be inclined to receive Stacey’s proposal with favor, and he accordingly wrote her a long and labored epistle, urging her, for the sake of the Home of the Elder Brother, to bury the war hatchet. Jim’s intentions were better than his spelling, which was even worse than Milly’s, and his letter amused her very much. One phrase struck her as especially diverting: “Stacey says you treated him worse than a Niger.”
Jim had spelled the word with an economy of g’s, and a capital letter, which suggested visions of Darkest Africa. Milly laughed till she cried.
“Perhaps I have been impolite to him,” she thought. Milly had a horror of being discourteous, and she wrote Jim that if Stacey would not be “soft,” she would be nice to him for the sake of the Home of the Elder Brother. Jim considered this quite a triumph, and showed the letter to Stacey on the occasion of his next visit.
Stacey did not look as pleased as Jim had expected.
“Catch me being soft with her,” he muttered. “I’ll show Miss Milly how much I care for her airs. By the way, Jim, we are to have two invitations each to give away for the prize essays and declamations at the close of school. I intend to invite Miss Winnie De Witt and Miss Vaughn. I thought I would mention it, as it might influence your invitations.”
Jim opened his eyes aghast at what he heard. “You don’t mean to say that you are not going to send Miss Milly one of your tickets?”
“Yes, I do.”