"But you needn't talk of it like THAT!" insisted the mother,
plaintively. "It's not--it's not--"

"No, it's not," said Mary. "I know that!"

"How did they happen to ask you to dinner?" Mr. Vertrees inquired,
uneasily. "'Stextrawdn'ry thing!"

"Climbers' hospitality," Mary defined it. "We were so very cordial
and easy! I think Mrs. Sheridan herself might have done it just as
any kind old woman on a farm might ask a neighbor, but it was Miss
Sheridan who did it. She played around it awhile; you could see she
wanted to--she's in a dreadful hurry to get into things--and I fancied
she had an idea it might impress that Lamhorn boy to find us there
to-night. It's a sort of house-warming dinner, and they talked about
it and talked about it--and then the girl got her courage up and
blurted out the invitation. And mamma--" Here Mary was once more
a victim to incorrigible merriment. "Mamma tried to say yes, and
COULDN'T! She swallowed and squealed--I mean you coughed, dear! And
then, papa, she said that you and she had promised to go to a lecture
at the Emerson Club to-night, but that her daughter would be delighted
to come to the Big Show! So there I am, and there's Mr. Jim Sheridan
--and there's the clock. Dinner's at seven-thirty!"

And she ran out of the room, scooping up her fallen furs with a
gesture of flying grace as she sped.

When she came down, at twenty minutes after seven, her father stood in
the hall, at the foot of the stairs, waiting to be her escort through
the dark. He looked up and watched her as she descended, and his gaze