Joel flashed her a smile, but wouldn't say anything, and his eyes twinkled so exactly like Mr. King's, that Alexia lost all patience.
"Oh! you horrid boy," she cried, and ran back dismally to the girls, with nothing to tell.
And Charlotte Chatterton walked as if she disdained the ground, her peaked hat towering threateningly, while her sallow face was wreathed with smiles; and it seemed as if she couldn't sing enough, throwing in encores in a perfectly reckless fashion.
"What is it? oh! I shall die if I don't know," exclaimed Alexia, over and over. "Girls, if some of you don't find out what's going on, I shall fly crazy!"
And the room buzzed and buzzed with delight, the growing mystery not lessening the hilarity.
"That's an uncommonly fine fellow I've just been talking with," said Mason Whitney, coming up to old Mr. King still keeping Polly by his side; "I haven't met such a man in one spell; he's a thorough-going intellectual chap, and he's been around the world a good deal, it's easy to see by his fine manner. Where did you pick him up?"
"Whom are you talking of, Mason?" asked Mr. King, in his crispest fashion.
"Why, that new man—Mr.—Mr.—I didn't catch the name when I was introduced, that you invited here to-night," said Mr. Whitney, with a little touch of the asperity yet remaining over the failure of his plan for Jasper, and he jerked his head in the direction of Mr. Marlowe.
"He?—oh! that's Jasper's publisher, Mr. Marlowe," said the old gentleman, trying to speak carelessly; then he burst into a laugh at Mr. Whitney's face.
"Whew!" exclaimed that gentleman, as soon as he could speak, "I've got to eat humble pie before my fourteen-year-old son Dick, and you've taken my breath away, Polly," looking at her blooming cheeks and happy eyes, "with that piece of news, and"—