Long before the tea was over, Grace Goodchild, two miles north of him,
realized that H. R. was one of those detestable persons who are always
right. A dozen of her intimates surrounded her in the Dutch room. They
all talked at once. When eleven stopped for lack of breath the twelfth,
who very cleverly had saved hers, asked:
"Did they really pick you out, Grace?"
The speaker was not perfectly beautiful. But she was wise and therefore
a virgin.
"No!" said Grace. "But really, I don't want to have anything to do with
it."
"If Hendrik was _my_ Hendrik, I'd be _It_," said the wise virgin,
determinedly, "or he'd know it!"
"He told me," Grace spoke modestly, "that only perfectly beautiful girls
would be chosen. And so of course that lets me out!"
"Oh-h-h-h!" came in chorus. There ensued much whispering. Grace flushed.
No woman likes to be accused of mendacity monosyllabically. It made her
dislike H. R. more than ever.
"Does your father," asked the wise one, "still oppose--"
"He does," answered Grace. Then she added, "Of course."
"I think your father--" And the wise one bit her lips. You would have
thought she was snipping off thread with her teeth. A well-bred person
must do this oftener than a seamstress--to keep herself from telling the
truth.
"_My_ father," tactfully observed Marion Molyneux, "could oppose until
the cows came home."
"Mamma is on the commission and I'm not eligible, so _I_ am not after
his vote," said Ethel Vandergilt. "But I'd love to meet him, Grace. Is
he all they say he is?"
Grace Goodchild for the first time began to realize that H. R. was a
remarkable man. She realized it by the simple expedient of disliking
Ethel.
"Is it true that he'll do anything you tell him?" cut in Cynthia
Coleman, enviously. She was a very pretty girl, with the absurd doll
face that makes men feel so manly. She had brains. A girl with that face
always has. She shows it by never showing them. The face does the trick
more quickly.