Mrs. Wistar looked tried. "When I've already been down to speak to them and tell them you would? Get up quickly, Selina, and slip off that dress and let me take your hair down, and put it up again. Nobody can make it look so well and stay in place as I can. There's plenty of time if you'll come on. Mrs. Tuttle said they would go up to the Harrison's and leave cards and be back for you."
Mamma worked swiftly, a hairpin or two for immediate use held between her lips and preventing conversation, while the clear-cut face of Selina before the mirror of the mahogany bureau looked absently at the face of Selina within the mirror.
There was something about Tuttle's solicitude and zeal for her which she did not understand. This arrival now of Mrs. Tuttle and Mrs. Sampson was but more of the same vaguely disturbing sort of thing.
"Mamma, it's too much, it's forever Tuttle's family. Do you realize I'm about being run by his family?"
Mamma got rid of the hairpins. "And why shouldn't you be? They see that he admires you, and I must say it's very generous and sweet of them——"
"Generous, Mamma?"
"Well, the word was ill-advised. I'll get out your coat and hat now your hair's done, while you slip on your dress."
"That's all, Mamma, please. I'll finish dressing quicker by myself if you'll let me."
Selina wanted to think, and she sighed with relief as the door closed behind her mother. Was she, in truth, being absorbed, by Tuttle and his people? She ran over the past weeks in her mind. Culpepper Buxton had apologized and she accepted the truce, but did she have time ever to see him? When did she see Maud and Juliette and Adele nowadays?
And just how came it about? Quite casually late one afternoon in March, Tuttle and his mother had dropped in. Selina had not met this lady before. Report had it that if Tuttle's father took him calmly, he on the contrary led his mother by her fine, straight Tuttle nose. In the course of the brief call it developed that Mrs. Jones had charge of a booth at the forthcoming Easter kirmess, and wanted to know if Selina would make one of the half dozen young people to assist her? Also in leaving, she held Selina's hand a moment overlong in her beautifully gloved one. She was tall, fair and good looking-herself. "You're very winning and lovely, my dear," she said, "and I quite can see why my Tuttle thinks so."