"I didn't say she wanted me to practise with her. I said that I proposed to play a duet with Hope sometime this winter."
Jimmy made no further remark concerning the matter, but he said to himself: "Yes, that's it; Dolly has had the nerve to propose to play a duet with that girl, and my opinion is that she'll get snubbed. Miss Hope Benham isn't going to stand Dolly's impudence,—not a bit of it."
"What concert is it, Jimmy, that comes off on Wednesday?" suddenly asked Mrs. Dering here.
"I don't know of any except that affair at the Somersets'."
"Oh, that for Mr. Kolb! I wish I had been told of that earlier. I only heard about it at the last minute, and then I couldn't get any ticket for love or money."
"Mamma tried to get tickets too," said Dolly, "but they seemed to be all snapped up at the very start by that Somerset clique. I think it was real mean. There are other people in Boston, besides the Somersets, that know about music, and can appreciate—"
"But there was a limit of tickets,—there had to be; for Mrs. Somerset's parlors, big as they are, can only hold just so many," put in Jimmy, in explanation.
"Your young friend may be going to this concert," suggested Mrs. Dering, reflectively.
Dolly bounced up like an India-rubber ball at this suggestion, and cried out,—
"Why, of course that's where she's going, I might have known it." And then Dolly leaned back discontentedly, and reflected upon the good fortune that seemed to attend Hope Benham at every step. There was Kate Van der Berg lavishing all sorts of attentions upon her; and here was this testimonial concert that the Somersets had got up for Mr. Kolb, and that everybody was pining to go to, open to her! "Wonder who she is visiting, anyway," Dolly pondered, in the course of these reflections,—"perhaps the Somersets themselves,—'twould be just like her luck."