Polly flushed, but said nonchalantly: “Poor Tom! He feels awfully bored with us girls, at times!”
“I should think so! especially if he came home for a visit with the idea of finding a nice girl to propose to. Now Jack thinks that Tom, with his good looks, his wonderful intelligence, and his family-tree, to say nothing of the Latimer fortune, ought to be able to take his pick of any New York girl that is looking for an ideal husband,” remarked Eleanor, guilelessly.
Polly flashed her a look. “Since when has Jack Baxter dropped his maligning of Tom Latimer, and started to admire him?”
Eleanor bit her lips to prevent a smile, but she replied, innocently: “Why, Jack always did admire Tom, even when he met him at Pebbly Pit. But he is jealous of him, for all the admiration he has for him. But I’ll tell you, Polly: I wouldn’t trust Jack in a case of ‘love or war.’ He’d as soon make Tom believe you were in love with another man, as anything else, if he could win a point by it.”
But Eleanor over-stepped her ambition this time. Polly quickly replied: “Then Jack must be trying to ‘win a point’ when he got you to tell me that Tom was calling on another girl, uptown.”
Eleanor realized her error and had common sense enough not to endeavor to explain it away. She merely said: “Oh well, Tom is too handsome a fellow to be wandering about New York these nights without a guardian. Some wide awake girl is going to snap him up the first chance!”
“Seems to me, Nolla, that Tom has been wandering about since he arrived in the City, with a whole bevy of guardians to keep him from snares and pitfalls. With all of us girls surrounding him, a fine chance any other girl could have found to snap him.”
Eleanor was evidently getting worsted in her well-meant plan to further Tom’s case, so she wisely decided to keep still.
Nothing was heard from Tom the next day, although Polly was sure he would call, or telephone, before evening. Then the telephone did ring, but it was Mr. Dalken, inviting the entire family over to his apartment for a party that evening.
“Just an impromptu affair, you know, with some of our old friends coming in to spend the evening.”