“Come in, come in, you’re one of us.”
“If you let a mosquito in—Take that chair by Mrs. Weir if you feel up to it; she wants to be entertained.”
“I feel up to anything—now,” said Rivers, taking with alacrity the seat allotted to him, after shaking hands with pretty Mrs. Waring, who lived next door, and her cousin, Mrs. Weir. “Same old crowd, I see.”
The laughter broke out anew as his wandering eyes took tally of the group, and he said, “Where’s Callender? and Weir? What’s the joke?”
“Oh, don’t ask for any woman’s husband or any man’s wife,” said Mrs. Callender despairingly, with her graceful figure reclining back in the low chair. “Can’t you see that we’re all detached?” Her charming smile suddenly broke forth. “It’s really too absurd.”
“No!” said Rivers, a light dawning on him. “Nichols, you don’t mean that you are on the waiting list too?”
Mr. Nichols, a large man with a grizzled head, nodded and helped himself to the contents of the suggestive bowl. “The missus and the kids went off last week; I’m detained for a while longer. As for Callender; he got a summons from the company, and he’s half way to Chicago by this time, I hope. I came over on purpose to tell his last words to his wife, who didn’t want them.”
“Ned had already brought them,” said Mrs. Callender, turning to the tall, quiet man of the cigar, Mr. Atwood, who was her brother. “It’s such a mercy that he happened to come on, or I’d have been here all alone.”
“Looks like it,” said Mr. Porter, a stout fair gentleman with a cool gray eye, a bald head, and a gurgling laugh. “What do you think, Rivers, these girls here”—he waved his hand—“had been counting on seeing the whole lot of us to-night, and brewed that lemonade on purpose.”
“Everyone has come now but the Martindales,” said Mrs. Weir, a little woman with loosely piled dark hair, and a gentle, winning voice, occasionally diversified with a surprising shriek of laughter.