“‘Oh, Peter, Peter! No miracles between friends.’”
“I don’t follow you,” rejoined Mr. Whitely.
Mr. Blodgett turned and said to me, “I’m going West for two months, and while I’m gone the Twelfth-night revel at the Philomathean is to come off. Will you see that the boss and Agnes get cards?” Then he faced about and remarked, “Whitely, I’d give a big gold certificate to know what nerve food you use!” and went out, laughing.
When I took the invitations to Mrs. Blodgett, I found you all with your heads full of a benefit for the Guild, to be given at your home,—a musical evening, with several well-known stars as magnets, and admission by invitation as an additional attraction. Mrs. Blodgett said to me in her decisive way, “Dr. Hartzmann, the invitations are five dollars each, and you are to take one.”
I half suspected that it was only a device to get me within your doors, though every society woman feels at liberty to whitemail her social circle to an unlimited degree. But the fact that the entertainment was to be in your home, even more than my poverty, compelled me to refuse to be a victim of her charitable kindness or her charitable greed. I merely shook my head.
“Oh, but you must,” she urged. “It will be a delightful evening, and then it’s such a fine object.”
“Do not ask it of Dr. Hartzmann,” you protested, coming to my aid. “No one”—
“I’m sure it’s very little to ask,” remarked Mrs. Blodgett, in a disappointed way.
“Mrs. Blodgett,” I said, in desperation, “for years I have denied myself every luxury and almost every comfort. I have lived at the cheapest of boarding-houses; I have walked down-town, rain or shine, to save ten cents a day; I have”—I stopped there, ashamed of my outbreak.
“I suppose, Dr. Hartzmann,” retorted Agnes, with no attempt to conceal the irritation she felt toward me, “that the Philomathean is one of your ten-cent economies?”