“Humph! How about Caraffi, then?”
“That’s different, of course. Caraffi plays exquisitely. I heard him last year, you know, in Baltimore. I was so glad when we could get him to come. It makes us sure of success, and we’ve all worked hard.”
“You have,” the colonel remarked dryly; then he rose reluctantly from the old garden-seat where they had been sitting. “I suppose we might as well go, Jinny, and get it over.”
“You mean—to call upon Mrs. William Carter?”
She spoke in a low voice. For the first time there was a note in it that betrayed the pressure she was putting on herself. It did not tremble, but it hurt the colonel’s ear.
He glanced at her quickly, and caught the soft flush on her downcast face. He thought she had never looked so pretty.
“Yes,” he replied slowly. “When I’ve got to have a tooth pulled I like to get it over. Suppose we go now, Jinny?”
“All right,” she smiled cheerfully. “I’ll ask her for Friday, and get that over, too. You see, they put me on the musical committee.”
“Going to play, child?”
She shook her head.