“Papa!  Oh, oh!” And Miss Vertrees was fain to apply a handkerchief upon her eyes.  “I’m so glad you made us go!  I wouldn’t have missed it—­”

Mrs. Vertrees shook her head.  “I suppose I’m very dull,” she said, gently.  “I didn’t see anything amusing.  They’re most ordinary, and the house is altogether in bad taste, but we anticipated that, and—­”

“Papa!” Mary cried, breaking in.  “They asked us to dinner!”

“What!”

“And I’m going!” she shouted, and was seized with fresh paroxysms.  “Think of it!  Never in their house before; never met any of them but the daughter—­and just barely met her—­”

“What about you?” interrupted Mr. Vertrees, turning sharply upon his wife.

She made a little face as if positive now that what she had eaten would not agree with her.  “I couldn’t!” she said.  “I—­”

“Yes, that’s just—­just the way she—­she looked when they asked her!” cried Mary, choking.  “And then she—­she realized it, and tried to turn it into a cough, and she didn’t know how, and it sounded like —­like a squeal!”

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Vertrees, much injured, “that Mary will have an uproarious time at my funeral.  She makes fun of—­”

Mary jumped up instantly and kissed her; then she went to the mantel and, leaning an elbow upon it, gazed thoughtfully at the buckle of her shoe, twinkling in the firelight.

“They didn’t notice anything,” she said.  “So far as they were concerned, mamma, it was one of the finest coughs you ever coughed.”

“Who were ’they’?” asked her father.  “Whom did you see?”

“Only the mother and daughter,” Mary answered.  “Mrs. Sheridan is dumpy and rustly; and Miss Sheridan is pretty and pushing—­dresses by the fashion magazines and talks about New York people that have their pictures in ’em.  She tutors the mother, but not very successfully—­ partly because her own foundation is too flimsy and partly because she began too late.  They’ve got an enormous Moor of painted plaster or something in the hall, and the girl evidently thought it was to her credit that she selected it!”

“They have oil-paintings, too,” added Mrs. Vertrees, with a glance of gentle price at the Landseers.  “I’ve always thought oil-paintings in a private house the worst of taste.”

“Oh, if one owned a Raphael or a Titian!” said Mr. Vertrees, finishing the implication, not in words, but with a wave of his hand.  “Go on, Mary.  None of the rest of them came in?  You didn’t meet Mr. Sheridan or—­” He paused and adjusted a lump of coal in the fire delicately with the poker.  “Or one of the sons?”

Mary’s glance crossed his, at that, with a flash of utter comprehension.  He turned instantly away, but she had begun to laugh again.

“No,” she said, “no one except the women, but mamma inquired about the sons thoroughly!”

“Mary!” Mrs. Vertrees protested.