Rob gave her a withering look of pretended reproach, and Prue said: "Who was that interesting young man whom your father introduced to me? That Mr. Stanhope?"
"Is he interesting, Prudy? He has lots of interest, if that's what you mean," said Hester. "You have just said nearly all I know about him. He is Mr. Arthur Stanhope. I know a little more. He had a cautious and conservative father, who had a million to leave this boy, so he appointed my father his guardian, and left the money so that the son could use only the interest until he was thirty. Then he comes into his million, and in the meantime is not starving on its interest. Father says he is a good youth, not spoiled by his prospects, and I know that if he is it is largely owing to my father, who has been a faithful guardian, and has influenced this boy's tastes and aims. I don't know him particularly well myself, though he has been to the house a great deal; we never seemed to get on together.'"
"I thought he was as nice as he could be," remarked Prue with her grown-up air, which made it trying to have Rob suggest quickly that none of us could be more than that, and to have the older girls laugh.
"Oh, Rob, here comes Mr. Armstrong!" cried Wythie from her post at the window.
"So early!" exclaimed Rob. "Yet we might have known that he wouldn't linger in Fayre for luncheon. And we were having such a heavenly, halcyon time! Prue, do get out my brown dress while I smooth this demented hair of mine!"
Rob pulled out her pins and brushed her unruly locks into her hand, head downward, and with the brush, like the Red Queen's, in "Alice," in danger of getting lost, in the bright and beautiful rings of which Hester telegraphed to Wythie an admiration which Rob would have resented had it been audible.
Wythie always seemed to be ready for any one's arrival, from the king to the ashman. She placidly smoothed her soft hair, of which not a lock was misplaced, pulled down her shirt-waist, made sure her belt covered the line of her skirt—which it invariably did—and was ready to go down to help her mother receive their caller, leaving Rob to Hester and Prue's mercies to be helped into her street gown.
"Because I've got to go up to Aunt Azraella's when I take you to the station, and I can't go through the agony of dressing three times a day," she explained frantically struggling with a hook that refused to find its affinity in a loop half buried in the shoulder seam.
"Not faded by late hours, Miss Roberta?" said Mr. Armstrong, rising to greet Rob as she entered looking radiant from her hurried toilette.
"Only my glories of last night are faded, sir," said Rob, giving her hand to the old gentleman whose kindly voice and manner she found even more likable than her memory of them.