"What nonsense!" exclaimed Miss Hurlstone. "You know quite well that you despise us butterflies. You prefer being a grub in those horrid mines all the time, and won't come out of your chrysalis. It's too bad!"
"That is all very well, Miss Hurlstone, but how would the butterflies ever exist but for the state of grubdom? Perhaps I shall burst my chrysalis some day, and flutter up and be a giddy old butterfly, but I am afraid you will have nothing to say to me then."
"Nothing!" said the young lady, decisively; "if you will not when you may," and the battledore and shuttlecock of chaff went on, while Mrs. Hurlstone, who had been sweeping the house with her opera-glass, said to Grace,
"Who are the people whose box Sir Mordaunt is in?"
Grace felt sure Mrs. Hurlstone knew.
"Mrs. Flynn and Miss Clayton. Have you never met them?"
"Oh, I believe I have met them, but they are not in our set. I fancy they are from Kentucky."
"There is no objection to that, is there?" asked Grace, with apparent innocence. "If Kentucky can produce such pretty women, I congratulate Kentucky."
"Pretty, yes—but such style! You English, my dear Miss Ballinger, are so very odd. You take up people that we should never know! You do that all the time in England. We hear of such extraordinary people being received there. It does seem so strange to us."
Grace recognized some truth in what Mrs. Hurlstone said. Probably, if she were American, she would feel much as Mrs. Hurlstone did. But she felt sure these young women were quite harmless; they had amused her; in a certain way she had liked them; she was too loyal to give them up. So when Mrs. Hurlstone followed up her remark with, "Do tell me where you made Mrs. Flynn's acquaintance?" Grace replied, "At a dinner your friend, Mr. Sims, gave us at Delmonico's. Is there any reason why he should not have asked them?"