"Possibly, but that makes no difference. She doesn't know what love is, the dear thing, and is flattered because he is so dreadfully devoted to her. I encouraged it, because I don't think it does any harm for a girl to be engaged to one or two men before she really settles down. It improves her greatly. It gives her poise, manner, independence. Pearl is such a simple thing. Why, she thought at first that he wanted her money, but he assured her that it would never have made any difference at all if papa had never left her all those millions. He wanted her for herself alone. It's sweet of him, isn't it? Well, I told her that as long as they were so devoted to each other they might be engaged for a while—until May, anyway. We are going to London then for the season and will bring back a duke."
"For the donkey-dinner?" said I.
"Yes," said Mrs. Radigan. "Won't you have another cup of tea?"
Miss Veal's Engagement is Announced
Mrs. Radigan has now announced the engagement of her sister to Plumstone Smith, Jr. She let it leak out a few weeks ago, and then kept the matter well before the public by daily denials. But it was finally announced the other day, and on Sunday pictures of the happy pair, with cupids hovering around them, and views of the new Radigan mansion, where, it was said, they were to be married in the fall, filled a page in several papers. Miss Veal's fortune was placed by the social historians at $20,000,000, though I know positively it is only a fifth of that sum. However, the Plumstone Smiths are secretly quite satisfied, for I notice that they are having their old-fashioned brown-stone-front house redecorated, and Junior seems to have purchased himself an entire new wardrobe. Deluded youth! He does not know Mrs. Radigan. He thinks that he has fixed himself for life, when, really, he is simply the isle of safety on which my good friends will rest secure for a few months in the smart whirl. After him, a London season and a duke. And he needs the money so! Besides, Miss Veal is really a great catch. Miss Bumpschus, of course, is a greater prize financially, but, on her mother's side, her family is very old. She traces her line back to the eighteenth century without a break, so she might safely be called plain.
Miss Veal, it always seemed to me, would make an ideal wife. She is rich and beautiful, she can read and write, she is ineligible to be a Daughter of anything, and I have never heard her give forth an idea of any kind; she is stunning in an opera-box, and even her motoring garb cannot smother her loveliness. But, of course, Mrs. Plumstone Smith had to intimate to a few close friends that her son was making a mésalliance in wedding this upstart from Kansas City. The Plumstone Smiths are as old as the Bumpschuses, but they have always been cultivated, and so are poor. But Plumstone Junior is a rising cotillon leader, and has a brilliant career before him in any event. His mother felt that more wealth and family, and less looks would be desirable. Echoes of this came to Mrs. Radigan's ears, and with that rare strategy of hers she announced that she had bitterly opposed the match from the start, as she felt that Plumstone had nothing to recommend him but his pedigree. Family would not make the automobile go. This country was bursting with old families. Philadelphia alone could supply the rightful heir to every title in Europe. If Plumstone had some brains she would hail him as a brother, but as he was only a glorified dancing-master, she would receive him on sufferance.
Forthwith came Mrs. Plumstone Smith, in a Williegilt carriage, to call on Mrs. Radigan and kiss her and call her "Sally." After her came the whole family, some vastly rich, some vastly poor, to rave over Mrs. Radigan and her beautiful sister. And Mrs. Radigan took them all in.