"But you got my note?"
"Not a word."
"Why, I wrote you how we were having a ball of our own, and how I
couldn't come to this one till I had started off that one."
"What kind of a ball?" asked Mrs. Pence.
"One given by our Telephone Girls. I led the grand march with a lovely
young bartender. I struck him all in a heap--can you wonder?--and he told
me just what he thought of me. There wasn't much time to lead up to it.
He was very direct; he took a short cut. Oh, I love the _people_! Why are
the men in our set so shy----!"
"What did he say?" asked Bond sharply.
"Oh, never mind! It was one of those cannon-ball compliments that leave
you stunned and breathless, but willing to be stunned again. What do you
think of my togs?" she asked, generally.
"Look at this jacket while it's a novelty," she went on without waiting
for any response. "The girls were all tremendously taken by it; I noticed
a dozen of them trying to see how it was made.--Oh, how do?" she said
airily to Abner, who came up just then. Having perceived Medora in her
remote corner, he had finally summoned enough resolution to make his
first movement of the evening: leaving Edith Whyland in the company of
Dr. Gowdy, he had succeeded in crossing the intervening leagues alone and
unaided.
Abner frowned to find this pert little piece cutting in ahead of him in
such a fashion. "How do you do?" he responded stiffly.
"They'll all be making ones like it," Clytie rattled on. "By next Sunday
every street from Poplar Alley to Flat-iron Park will swarm with them,
and not a milliner's window along the length of Green-gage Road but will
have three or four of these toques on display. Yes, sir; I'm a power in
the Ward already, let me tell you."
Bond placed his small hand on Abner's broad shoulder. "Isn't she a
winner?" he murmured ecstatically. "If Medora, now, could only have done
something as spirited and unconventional----"
"I have no fault to find with Miss Giles," retorted Abner in a stern
undertone. "To me she is perfectly satisfactory. She will always do the
right thing in the right way, and always be a lady."
Bond withdrew his hand. "Oh, come, I say," he began protestingly.
Abner ignored this. "How about the basket-weaving?" he asked Clytie.
"Well," Clytie responded hardily, "I found plenty teaching that already.
I have chosen for my department instruction in tact, taste, dress and
manners. Such instruction is badly needed, in more quarters than one."
Medora flushed. "Clytie Summers," she said, the first moment that the two
were alone, "if ever you speak to Mr. Joyce like that again you need
never come to our studio nor count me any longer among your
acquaintances."
"Why, dear me----" began Clytie, with an affectation of puzzled
innocence.
"I mean it," said Medora, with an angry tear starting in her eye. "Mr.
Joyce is too much of a man to be treated so by a child like you."