"Propitiatory? What does?"
"Taking money as it's doled to you, or doing without."
They had reached the Tuttle house now in its broad yard. Carriages were arriving, delivering their occupants at the curb and driving away. Culpepper steered Selina in at the gate, up the flagging, and with her mounted the steps.
"I'm glad it's you and not me," was his cheering remark.
Selina herself was not feeling so glad about it all at once. Why had she not wondered earlier if any persons she knew would be here?
As the door opened to admit guests just ahead of them and the light fell on the lady entering and on her evening wrap bordered with swansdown, that elegance of the hour, Selina became conscious of Mamma's knitted throw on her head and Auntie's striped scarf about her shoulders.
"You—you'll be for me on time?" she reminded Culpepper, "Mamma thought half-past eleven at the latest?"
"Can you fancy I won't?" he returned, handing her in at the door, which was a nice way of putting it and a good deal from him.
Evidently it is one thing to be within the gay world and another to be of this world, and Selina in her striped scarf made her way hurriedly up the stairs. And a dressing-room filled with ladies, who know each other and who do not know you, presents parallels with Polar regions for chill and solitudes. Glances fell on her but they passed her over, or traveled elsewhere or beyond.