"She 's got the style, though, and the pull. I know a half-dozen of the fellows got dropped on to-night's cotillion."
"Kept it for me," said Jack, quietly.
"No, really, though--" and his chum fell to thinking rather seriously for him.
Just then came the morning's mail,--notes, letters, special delivery stamps, all the social accessories a popular Harvard man knows so well. Jack looked over his carelessly,--invitations to dinner, to theatre parties, "private views," golf parties, etc. He pushed them aside, showing little interest. He, like his Cousin Hazel, was used to it.
The morning's mail was an old story, for Sherrill was worth a fortune in his own right, as several hundred mothers and daughters in New York and Boston and Philadelphia knew full well.
Moreover, if he had not had a penny in prospect, Jack Sherrill would have attracted by his own manly qualities and his exceptionally good looks. His riches, to which he had been born, had not as yet wholly spoiled him, but they cheated him of that ambition that makes the best of young manhood, and Life was out of tune at times--how and why, he did not know, and there was no one to tell him.
He had rather hoped for a note from Maude Seaton, thanking him, in her own charming way, for the flowers he had sent her on her arrival from New York the day before. True, she had worn some in her corsage, but, for all Jack knew, they might have been another man's; for Maude Seaton was never known to have less than four or five strings to her bow. It was just this uncertainty about her that attracted Jack.
"Hello! Here 's a letter for you by mistake in my pile," said his chum.
"Why, this is from my little Cousin Hazel, who is rusticating just now somewhere in the Green Mountains." Jack opened it hastily and read,--
MOUNT HUNGER, MILL SETTLEMENT, BARTON'S