in those quarters. No more could she assume that
this conversation and those stares were but the involuntary offerings of
the multitude to beauty and brilliant success. And yet she did not seem
to mind so very much....

"I just gave my Settlement check to Mr. Byrd," added mamma. "He was very
grateful, but not as grateful as he ought to have been."

She glided back to her position near the door. Mrs. McVey, chatting on,
observed that the Pond man hadn't seemed impatient to make her
acquaintance, though she had waited round some time to give him the
pleasure; also that there were no refreshments but ice-water from the
new ten-gallon cooler in the hall. Then she, in her turn, passed on, as
J. Forsythe Avery was discerned steering in a fixed direction through
the crowd.

"Are your labors ended so soon?"

Mr. Avery bowed pluperfectly, and Cally smiled suddenly. He was a pink,
slightly bald young man, and had once been described by Mr. Berkeley
Page as very gentlemanly.

"What are you laughing at?" inquired he, somewhat lugubriously.

"Only at something funny Mrs. McVey just said. You know how witty she
is.... Have you handed them all out?"

"I appointed a deputy," confessed Mr. Avery, "but I labored hard for a
time. Am I not entitled to--er--the rewards of labor now?"

Cally glanced away, with no more desire to smile. The look in his pink
eyes had arrested her attention, and she wondered whether she could
possibly bring herself to take him. She was not wanted as a Settlement
worker; and he would be colossally wealthy some day. Perhaps he lacked
an indefinable something that comes from grandfathers, but he had never
committed a social fault in his life, unless you would hold up against
him an incurable fondness for just one tiny little drop of cologne on a
pure linen handkerchief. Mamma would be rather pleased, poor dear.

Then her mind's eye gave her a flashing memory-picture of Canning, the
matchless, and Mr. Avery became unimaginable....

"Such as what?" said she, listlessly, to his roguish hints of reward.

"I should offer my escortage for--er--a small tour over the premises,
and so forth. Why not?"

"No reason in the world, except that I may not go over the prem ..."

That word the speaker left forever unfinished. And her next remark was:

"What did you say?"

Obviously there was an interlude here; and in it Cally Heth had seen,
and recovered from the sudden sight of, the strange young man Mr. V.V.,
up