"Blushing--for WARD?" she asked.

Mrs. Putnam stirred her tea thoughtfully.

"I didn't know," she said. "You're young, and you know him well,
and you're--well, you have appearance, as it were!"

Harriet laughed.

"Ward is twenty-two," she observed.

"And you're--?"

"I shall be twenty-seven in August."

"Well, that's not serious," the older woman decided, mildly. "The
point is, he's a man. Ward has fine stuff in him," she added, "and
also, I think, he is beginning to care. It would be an engagement
that would please the Carters, I imagine."

The word engagement brought a filmy vision before Harriet's eyes,
born of the fragrance and sunshine of the summer. She saw a ring,
laughter and congratulations, dinner parties and receptions,
shopping in glittering Fifth Avenue.

"Perhaps it would," she said, with a hint of surprise in her tone.
"They are really very simple, and always good to me! But old
Madame Carter," she laughed, "would go out of her mind!"