"Well--that's not a bad recommendation. I like an important man to think well of himself. I'll ask him for my Settlement dinner Saturday, when those Cheritons stop nagging at him."
Mamma looked slightly flushed beneath her fixed smile; a look which her daughter had no difficulty in understanding. More than once this afternoon, Cally had encountered significant stares upon herself, instantly removed, which showed with amusing candour that she was the subject of conversation in those quarters. No more could she assume that this conversation and those stares were but the involuntary offerings of the multitude to beauty and brilliant success. And yet she did not seem to mind so very much....
"I just gave my Settlement check to Mr. Byrd," added mamma. "He was very grateful, but not as grateful as he ought to have been."
She glided back to her position near the door. Mrs. McVey, chatting on, observed that the Pond man hadn't seemed impatient to make her acquaintance, though she had waited round some time to give him the pleasure; also that there were no refreshments but ice-water from the new ten-gallon cooler in the hall. Then she, in her turn, passed on, as J. Forsythe Avery was discerned steering in a fixed direction through the crowd.
"Are your labors ended so soon?"
Mr. Avery bowed pluperfectly, and Cally smiled suddenly. He was a pink, slightly bald young man, and had once been described by Mr. Berkeley Page as very gentlemanly.
"What are you laughing at?" inquired he, somewhat lugubriously.
"Only at something funny Mrs. McVey just said. You know how witty she is.... Have you handed them all out?"
"I appointed a deputy," confessed Mr. Avery, "but I labored hard for a time. Am I not entitled to--er--the rewards of labor now?"
Cally glanced away, with no more desire to smile. The look in his pink eyes had arrested her attention, and she wondered whether she could possibly bring herself to take him. She was not wanted as a Settlement worker; and he would be colossally wealthy some day. Perhaps he lacked an indefinable something that comes from grandfathers, but he had never committed a social fault in his life, unless you would hold up against him an incurable fondness for just one tiny little drop of cologne on a pure linen handkerchief. Mamma would be rather pleased, poor dear.