"Ever so many people," he said to me, as the soup was being removed (the captain rarely conversed much while there was anything engrossing on the table), "ever so many people have asked me about sending you invitations, and I've told 'em by all means; for you certainly were going out."
"Why didn't you remind them of Grace and Esther, and let them have the whole of the nursery, while they were about it?" asked Josephine, scornfully.
"Grace can speak for herself," said that young person, tartly. "You may tell them, if they ask anything about me," she continued, turning to the captain, "that they needn't look for my début till Josephine is disposed of, and I am, par excellence, Miss Churchill."
"Then," said the captain, gallantly, "you will not have a long time to wait, if what they say is true. I hear it hinted, Miss Josephine, that since Mr. Rutledge came from abroad this last time, he is quite changed, softened, you know, and made rather a society man; and they do say that his friends in Gramercy Square have something to do with it."
"I can't imagine how," said Josephine, all smiles and blushes.
"If Joseph knew when she was well off," interposed Grace, who loved to damp her sister's triumphs, "she wouldn't blush; she doesn't look well; she grows mahogany color, doesn't she Phil. Why, you're blushing too! What's the matter with everybody?"
"Everybody is blushing at your rudeness," said Mrs. Churchill, gravely. "I am sorry to be obliged to reprove you at the table; but I assure you, if you are not more careful"——
"Oh, mamma! you've always said it wasn't polite to deliver a reprimand in company; don't break through your rule. I won't say another word about blushing. Let's talk of something pleasanter. So," she continued, turning to the captain, "they really say Mr. Rutledge wants to marry Josephine?"
"Grace, leave the table," said her mother, concisely, but in a tone there was no mistaking, and which fell on the ears of the startled company with uncomfortable clearness, and on none more unexpectedly than on those of the young delinquent herself, who had never been so unequivocally disgraced before. She had trusted greatly to her mother's partiality and her own acuteness in warding off reproof, and this took her quite by surprise. She had not calculated the dangerous nature of the ground she was treading on, nor the decision of her mother's character when once roused, and so this edict came upon her like a clap of thunder. She was constitutionally incapable of blushing, or of looking confused, but she approached on this occasion more nearly to a state of embarrassment than I had ever supposed she could; but recovering herself in a moment, she deliberately folded her napkin and put it on the table, pushed back her chair, made a low courtesy, and saying, "Bon soir, mesdames; bon soir, messieurs," retreated in good order.
Rather an awkward pause ensued upon her exit; but it was soon broken by Mrs. Churchill's half laughing apology for her pertness, and Josephine was too much delighted with her adversary's discomfiture to be long silent. And she almost forgot to be spiteful to me, too, in the triumph of her acknowledged conquest. Even the dreaded task of dressing and preparing for the ball was accomplished without half of its accustomed drawbacks. Grace wisely kept out of sight, and Frances was less fluttering and timid than usual, so that at nine o'clock we all mustered in the parlor with comparatively undisturbed tempers.