“Did you know, then, that Mr Hammond would be there?”
“No, I had not the least idea that piece of luck would fall in my way. Meta managed that for me most delightfully. You know, girls, how earnestly the poor dear Elliot-Smiths aspire, and how vain are their efforts, to get into what we are pleased to call the ‘good set’ here. It isn’t their fault, poor things, for, though they really have no talent nor the smallest literary desires, they would give their eyes to be ‘hail-fellows-well-met’ with some of our intellectual giants. Well, Meta got to know Mr Hammond at a tennis party in the summer, and when she met him last week she asked him to come to her house to-day. She told me she was dying to have him, of course, but when she asked him she could see by his face and manner that he was searching his brains for an excuse to get out of it. All of a sudden it flashed into her head to say, ‘Some of our friends from St. Benet’s will be present.’ The moment she said this he changed, and got very polite, and said he would certainly look in for a little while. Poor Meta was so delighted! You can fancy her chagrin when he devoted himself all the time to Prissie.”
“He thought he’d meet Maggie Oliphant,” said Annie Day; “it was a shame to lure him on with a falsehood. I don’t wonder at people not respecting the Elliot-Smiths.”
“My dear,” responded Rosalind, “Meta did not tell a lie. I never could have guessed that you were strait-laced, Annie.”
“Nor am I,” responded Annie, with a sigh, which she quickly suppressed.
“The whole thing fitted in admirably with our wishes,” continued Rose, “and now we need not do anything further in the matter. Rumour, in the shape of Hetty Jones’s tongue, and Polly Singleton’s hints, will do the rest for us.”
“Do you really think that Maggie Oliphant cares for Mr Hammond?” asked Lucy Marsh.
“Cares for him!” said Rosalind. “Does a duck swim? Does a baby like sweet things? Maggie is so much in love with Mr Hammond that she’s almost ill about it—there!”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed the other two girls.
“She is, I know she is. She treats him shamefully, because of some whim of hers. I only wish she may never get him.”