“Sister!”
“He brought me. . . . Huh? . . .”
“Oh, he makes me so uncomfortable!” cried Mrs. Boardman from her heart. “And you, too, sister! It is useless for you to deny it!”
Miss Gittings did not deny it. She merely stirred her coffee. After awhile she said: “I think my first plan. . . . Huh? . . . A strangely pertinacious boy! . . . Let us take him. . . . That must be his Jewish blood . . . to a meeting of the circle. If Professor Boiling or Mr. Latham should happen to. . . . Huh? They being men . . . it would be more suitable. . . .”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Boardman with a sigh. “Certainly he is too much for us! . . . But sister,” she objected. “If we took him to one of the meetings wouldn’t it look as if we were prepared to vouch for him?”
“Vouch for him?” echoed Miss Gittings, startled. “Huh? . . . Well, what alternative is there?”
“I thought we might just mention Joe to Professor Bolling, without taking any responsibility for him, and ask the Professor here some night to question Joe.”
Miss Gittings considered the suggestion. “Yes,” she said, “letting the professor understand of course that our minds were quite. . . . Huh? We might ask Mr. Latham the same night; and Mrs. Van Buren; but not the other members of the circle with whom we are not exactly on. . . . Yes! And we might ask two or three people from outside the circle to whom we wish to show some little. . . . Quite informally. . . . Huh? . . . But Joe himself, sister, do you think. . . . Huh? . . .”
“Oh, I’m sure he will behave admirably,” said Mrs. Boardman, not without a touch of bitterness. “He is so quick to adapt himself.”
“It must all be very informal. . . . You might make one of your Spanish buns. . . . Huh?”