she was fairly launched
waited, economically, meanwhile, inhaling all the smoke from her
cigarette. "I suppose after all, it's quite natural," Lucile began,
"that Paula should attract geniuses, since she's rather by way of being
one herself."

Mary took the cigarette in her fingers so that she could speak a little
more crisply than was possible around it. "Who is the genius she's
attracting now? Doesn't father like him? And is he being not asked to the
party? I'm sorry, aunt, I didn't mean to interrupt."

"He is being asked which, it appears, is what Paula objects to; only not
until after dinner. That she insisted upon. Really," she went on, in
response to her niece's perplexed frown, "I shall be much more
intelligible If you'll let me begin at the beginning."

"Please do," said Mary. "Where did Paula find him?"

"I found him," said Miss Wollaston. "Paula discovered him a little later.
I found him on a bench in the park and told him he might come to tune
the drawing-room piano. Paula had him tune her piano instead and spent
what must have been a rather mad day with him over it. He brought round
some songs the next day for her to try and she and Portia Stanton's
husband have been practising them with hardly any intermission since. The
idea was that when they had 'got them up' as they say, the man,--March
his name is, Anthony March, I think,--should be invited round to hear
Paula sing them. Paula insists, absurdly it seems to me, that he never
has heard a note of them himself; that he can't even play them upon the
piano. How he could compose them without playing them on the piano first,
is beyond me. But she is inclined to be a little emotional, I think, over
the whole episode. Quite naturally--even Paula can't deny that--your
father thought he would like to be present when the songs were sung and
it was arranged that it should be this evening."

"She may not have been able to deny that it was natural," Mary observed,
"but I'd bet she didn't like it."

"It's only fair to Paula to say," Miss Wollaston insisted, "that she did
nothing to exhibit a feeling of that sort. But when, at John's
suggestion, I spoke of the possibility of having in the Cravens and the
Blakes,--the Cravens are very musical, you know--and Wallace Hood who
would be really hurt if we left him out, Paula came nearer to being
downright rude than she often allows herself to be. She said among other
things that she didn't propose to have March subjecte