"I shall be too faint to eat anything by then," she answered. "But it was sweet of you to offer, and you're a living lesson in manners for my cousin."
Oakleigh looked from one to the other.
"Hullo! Have you two been quarrelling?"
"No, it's my fault. I've offended him," Barbara explained. "You see, it's my birthday, and, ever since I was a baby, everybody's done everything I wanted on my birthday. I wanted to have supper with Jim, so I refused Bobbie Pentyre and Charlie Framlingham and Johnnie Carstairs. Then I asked Jim, and I'm afraid he thought that a girl oughtn't to ask a man to take her to supper—even her own cousin, at her own ball, on her own birthday."
There was a conciliatory laugh from Oakleigh, but Loring frowned with ill humour.
"That's not true, Barbara," he said.
"I'm sorry, Jim; it was the only reason I could think of. When I first asked you, I didn't know you were engaged."
The two men looked at each other; and Barbara smiled a welcome to Summertown, who came forward cautiously, with the tail of his eye on a trailing sword.
"I say, Babs, Murano wants to know whether he's to play the jolly old march-past."
"Oh, yes! Tell him to begin. You've got some one to take down to supper? Good boy! Will you lead off? I'm not going down."