"——in the interval," she amended. "They'll be back by sunset. They're clever girls and I know you'll enjoy them."
She uttered this belief emphatically—so emphatically, in truth, that it came to mean: "I wonder if you will indeed." And there was even an overtone: "After all, it's not the least necessary that you should."
"I suppose I have met one of them already."
"You have met Amy. But there are Hortense and Carolyn."
"What can they all be?" He wondered to himself: "daughters, nieces, cousins, co-eds, boarders…?"
"Amy plays. Hortense paints. Carolyn is a poet."
"Amy plays? Pardon me for calling her Amy, but you have never given me the rest of her name."
"I certainly presented you."
"To 'Amy'."
"Well, that was careless, if true. Her name is Amy Leffingwell; and
Hortense's name is——"