Three young girls had come into the room, followed by a youth whose deep black and carefully curled mustache at once revealed his race. A shriveled little man with thin white hair and beardless, wrinkled face, enlivened by a pair of keen eyes, walked loosely behind.
Fanny nodded to the girls and rose from her seat. The Frenchman greeted her with an elaborate bow. Guy looked uncomfortable, but Fanny did not try to relieve his embarrassment by introducing him. It was Mrs. Burrell who broke the silence.
“Ain’t it fine here to-night?” she said. “Well, Washington’s a wonderful place! Here’s Emeline’s been speakin’ French to Musseer de Lange on one side, and Gladys has been talking German to—” She looked round at the girls. “Where is he?” she asked.
“I think we have lost ’eem in the crowd,” the Frenchman explained, with a look of distress on his face. He had evidently been having a hard time.
“I guess Gladys’s German was too much for him,” said the tallest and the least pretty of the girls.
“I’ve asked you not to say things like that, Carrie Cora,” said Mrs. Burrell.
The old gentleman, who had been looking with a dazed expression at the book-shelves and at the etchings on the walls, now spoke for the first time, turning, with a smile, to Fanny.
“Carrie Cora an’ I are the plain ones of the family,” he said. “English is good enough for us.”
Mrs. Burrell sank into one of the leather chairs. “Well, it’s kind of a relief to get out of that crowd. You go over there, Emeline, an’ go on talkin’ French with musseer.”
The look of distress deepened in the face of the Frenchman, who, however, made a place for the girl.