Mr. Jones, his neat person and neat features and small moustache immaculate, finished his greetings without a shade of hurry, then made his way to Selina. Maud had wandered away now, and he took the place she had vacated. Whereupon the color began to rise in Selina's cheek, warm and permeating, and rich. For the eyes of Mr. Jones were sweeping over her face, her brow, her hair, even to the pale burnished knot at the nape of her neck, and sweeping back again over the whole. There were other masculine eyes that might have been doing the same that had declined their prerogative.
"I knew the style was yours when I asked you to try it" murmured Tuttle.
The color flamed higher.
"Mamma and I had cards to-day from your sister, Mrs. Sampson, for her next afternoon. It was nice of her to think of us," from Selina.
Selina and her mother did not know Mrs. Sampson.
"Promise me to accept and go," from Tuttle, earnestly. "A real promise I want. Exactly. Now I have it. I want you to know my people better, and my people to know you."
What could the color do at a speech such as this, but wave almost painfully, higher and even higher?
"Oh, I must tell you, by the way, your aunt, Mrs. Bruce came in the bank to-day to see me. She fancies she owes me some sort of thanks about her husband, which, of course, she doesn't at all. That off her mind, she asked me if I could give her any reasonable idea of how many women in town had a vault box, or if I could tell her how to find out how many have bank-books. What do you suppose?"
Selina had a nice voice, clear and sweet and when she was happy and merry, full of cadences. It rang silvery in its notes now. "I don't suppose. Nobody does when it's Aunt Juanita. Mamma says she's been hunting information of various kinds about women for fifteen years."
It was such a wonderfully pleasing thing to hear that silvery laugh, Tuttle Jones set about awakening it again.