Auntie took her note, then broke forth with the more immediate news happily: "Selina's going to a grown-up party at one of my old friend's to-morrow night."
Culpepper was bantering but practical. He got his pleasure out of these dear ladies, too. "Tomorrow night? How's she going to get there?"
True! They all three had forgotten! "To be sure, Selina!" said her mother, "it is your father's whist night."
"I can't see why she wants to go. I never see much in these things myself," from Culpepper, "but if you do, Selina, I'll come around and take you, wherever it is, and get you later and bring you home."
After he was gone Mamma and Auntie sang his praises. "It was both nice and thoughtful in him to remember about your father and his neighborhood whist club," said Mamma.
"I hope he's not inconveniencing himself to do it," from Auntie.
It would seem that all those honors right now crowding Selina were gone to her head. Resenting quite so much solicitude for Culpepper under the circumstances, she all but tossed that head.
"He wouldn't put himself out, let me assure you Mamma, and you, Auntie, too, if he didn't want to."
During the afternoon Cousin Anna Tomlinson, who lived a block away, came around, having heard the news through Aunt Viney, who had stopped to chat with the servants on her way to the grocery.
"I always meant to give Selina gold beads," she said as she came in, as if the enormity of the present crisis exonerated her from doing so now. "What has she to wear, Lavinia? Why certainly she can't go in her graduating dress. She's worn it on every occasion since she's had it. It's been dabby for some time."