“Well, Polly, I hear you are soaring in your ambition. Mr. Fabian wrote me how interested he was in Nolla and you.”
“Oh, did the dear man write you? I didn’t know he and you corresponded.”
“I took a great fancy to the idealist, and having always loved art for itself, I told him I would consider it a great pleasure if he would exchange letters with me when he had the opportunity. He has done better for me than I had any right to expect. He writes the most interesting letters—just as clever as his talks on art.”
Having found a willing listener in Tom, Polly expanded on her private opinion of such a wonderful teacher as Mr. Fabian was, and before the taxi drew up in front of the Maynard’s brown-stone mansion, Tom had the comforting assurance that Polly had quite forgotten her brother John’s unintentional neglect.
Jim and Ken enjoyed their hasty visit and then took their departure to catch their train going west. When Mrs. Maynard and Barbara dispensed tea, the three young men, John, Tom and Paul, had to enter into service for the hostess; but they would greatly have preferred to enjoy their time as each inclined—John alone with Anne in the conservatory, Tom and Polly talking art, and Paul making merry with Eleanor.
Barbara, who a year ago would have resented oblivion for herself, now smiled contentedly and gazed upon a huge solitaire.
“Bob, shall we announce it?” whispered her mother.
“No, they do not know Percival, and, moreover, not one of these people appreciate his social standing.”
So the young people now gathered about Mrs. Maynard’s tea-table were deprived (so Bob thought) of the greatest event of the past social season—her engagement to one of the most aristocratic and wealthiest eligibles on the market, Percival Weston.
Barbara twirled her solitaire smilingly, nor cared that her Percival was bald and diminutive, past the prime in life, and not over-brilliant. Had he not been the catch at Newport the previous Summer? And had he not attached himself to her as soon as she appeared in the Adirondack Camp presided over by the famous society leader of New York?