“Maybe you ate something for supper that didn’t agree with you.”
Grace read into this suggestion a hint that her mother and sister were not without their curiosity as to where she had dined and the manner in which she had spent the remainder of the evening. They had been accepting so meekly her silence as to her evenings away from home that it occurred to Grace that it would serve to allay suspicion if she told occasionally just what she had been doing.
“I had dinner at the Sycamore with an acquaintance—a man from out of town—and we went to the concert. The music was perfectly wonderful. And then we walked home. Nothing terribly exciting in that!”
“I thought I heard voices at the door just before you came in,” said Mrs. Durland with an effort at indifference that was only partly successful.
“Very likely you did, mamma. Mr. Trenton and I walked home; it seemed a pity to ride when the night was so fine and there was all that music still ringing in our ears.”
She was pleased with her own audacity and smiled as she saw Ethel and her mother exchange glances. But having ventured so far it would be necessary now to explain how she had met Trenton and she was prepared with a small lie with which to fortify the truth when she saw that something more was expected.
“Mr. Trenton, did you say, Grace?” inquired Mrs. Durland as though not sure she had heard aright.
“Yes, mother; Mr. Ward Trenton, of Pittsburgh. I knew his niece very well at the University, and as he comes here now and then Mabel wrote and asked him to look me up. He’s ever so nice. He’s been everywhere and talks wonderfully. He’s a mechanical engineer and rated very high, isn’t he, daddy?”
Trenton’s name had impinged upon Durland’s consciousness and he put down the morning newspaper to which he had been referring from time to time during the consumption of his breakfast.
“Ward Trenton? Yes, he’s one of the ablest engineers in the country. Did you say he’d been in town, Grace?”