More than a week later Annie gave a luncheon to a dozen women, and telephoned Norma beforehand, with a request that the girl come early enough to help her with name cards.
"These damnable engagement luncheons," said Aunt Annie, limping about the long table, and grumbling at everything as she went. Annie had wrenched her ankle in alighting from her car, and was cross with nagging pain. "Here, put Natalie next to Leslie, Norma; no, that puts the Gunnings together. I'll give you Miss Blanchard—but you don't speak French! Here, give me your pencil—and confound these things anyway——Fowler," she said to the butler, "I don't like to see a thing like that on the table—carry that away, please; and here, get somebody to help you change this, that won't do! That's all right—only I want this as you had it day before yesterday—and don't use those, get the glass ones——"
And so fussing and changing and criticizing, Annie went away, and Norma followed her up to her bedroom.
"I'm wondering when we're going to give you an engagement luncheon, Norma," said the hostess, in a whirl of rapid dressing. "Who's ahead now?"
"Oh—nobody!" Norma answered, with a mirthless laugh. She had been listless and pale for several days, and did not seem herself at all.
"Forrest Duer, is it?"
"Oh, good heavens—Aunt Annie! He's twenty-one!"
"Is that all—he's such a big whale!——Don't touch my hair, Phoebe, it'll do very well!" said Annie to the maid. "Well, don't be in too much of a hurry, Norma," she went on kindly. "Nothing like being sure! That"—Annie glanced at the retiring maid—"that's what makes me nervous about Leslie," she confessed. "I'm afraid we hurried the child into it just a little bit. It was an understood thing since they were nothing but kiddies."
"Leslie is outrageously spoiled," Norma said, not unkindly.
"Leslie? Oh, horribly. Mama always spoils everyone and poor Theodore spoiled her, too," Annie conceded.