"Every one to his taste," said Pendleton. "There goes Miss Emerson again, with Devereux et al. in tow," nodding toward the window.
"She looks like a thoroughbred," Burgoyne reflected, watching her swing across the links to the tennis courts. "It's a pity she has such a bounder for a father."
"The mother is worse; he is good natured and tries to be liked—she, however, comes pretty near being impossible."
"But she is a schemer—a manager, you say?"
"And she has managed this campaign to perfection, I admit. She must have lain awake nights for years scheming the moves. I saw it begin ten years ago—when the Emersons first appeared at a quiet summer hotel where some of our nice people went. She worked slowly, being content to make progress by degrees—to pick up a nodding and speaking acquaintance with the old families, and have her daughter get to know their daughters. Children, you know, are neither discriminating nor particular; if they like one, they don't ask for credentials. That is how Marcia Emerson got to know those who later, when she went away to school, became her friends. The campaign of ma mère has never relaxed in all those years—but it has taken many ramifications. The Club's needing the piece of ground was a fortunate accident—of the dame's foresight. She heard one day that we had bought here—the next day she had put the idea into Emerson's head to buy also. She meant to get in—and she got."
"One always admires a general!" commented Burgoyne. "At present I suppose she is engaged in stalking a prospective son-in-law?"
"Precisely—and she has him stalked; but daughter may spoil her plans—she has a mind of her own where she is intimately connected, I fancy. She has not got that black hair and dark eyes for nothing."
"Hum!" said Burgoyne, watching her with an appraising glance. "She sure is a looker—I don't blame the fellows for dancing attendance. If it were a couple of hundred years earlier they would be rapiering one another behind the coffee-house at sunrise.... Who is the man Madame Emerson has selected for her daughter?"
"Our friend."