As to Will Hardon, he lost no time in going to the table over which Frances and Edith presided to enquire for a sofa pillow which had been reserved for him.
"Reserved!" cried Edith in a tone of surprise, for Ruth had taken her into the secret. "I thought it was understood that nothing could be reserved here——"
Will's face fell, for he was very much in earnest.
"Oh, now Miss Blair," he said, "you surely were not in earnest last evening; you know that I had made up my mind to that pillow."
"Wouldn't something else do just as well?" she asked, "this centrepiece for example, I worked this," with an emphasis on the pronoun.
"Why, it's very pretty," said poor Will, "only I shouldn't know what to do with it, but I'd like it very much, really I would," he hastened to add, as Edith looked a little serious.
"Well, I'm sorry," she responded, "that you fix your affection on such impossible things; now this centrepiece is also disposed of. Mrs. Barlow has bought it, and will take it home this evening."
"Also," exclaimed Will, "you said 'also,' do you mean that the sofa pillow is really gone?"
Edith could not help smiling at his expression of disappointment.
"Here comes Ruth," she said, "ask her;" and Ruth, with her hands full of flowers which she was carrying across the room to Mrs. Pounder, paused for a moment.