"That is not likely, since Mr. Hammond left us in your care. Do not your fourfold duties oppress you?"
"Not in the least. If all my charges were as chary of their calls upon me as you are, my time would hang heavily upon my hands. No one would imagine, from your reluctance to be waited upon, that you had been spoiled at home. If Mr. Hammond were here now, he would tell you to draw that shawl"—
"It is an opera cloak!" interrupted Jeannie.
"A ball-cloak to-night, then, is it not? I was saying that, although the night is not cool for sea air, you had better wrap that mantle about your chest and throat as we go out."
Just outside the door a waiter passed them with a note in his hand. He stopped, on seeing Philip.
"Mr. Benson! I was on my way to your rooms with this, sir."
Philip stepped back within the parlor to read it by the light. It was a line from a friend who had just arrived at another hotel notifying him of this fact. It required no reply, and, leaving it upon the table, he rejoined his companions.
"See mamma! Isn't it just as I said?" whispered Jeannie, as she established herself beside her sister in a comfortable corner that commanded a view of the spacious hall and its gay, restless sea of figures.
Sarah smiled at discovering her mother sandwiched between two portly dowagers; one in purple, the other in lavender silk; all three bobbing and waving in their earnest confabulations, in a style that presented a ludicrously marked resemblance to the gesticulations of a group of Muscovy ducks, on the margin of a mud-puddle, held by them in their capacity of a joint-stock company.
"I see that Lucy has taken the floor," observed Philip. "She will not thank me for any devoirs I could render her for the next three hours. If they get up anything so humble as quadrilles, may I ask the pleasure of your company for the set?"