“Yes, indeed.  That’s what we expect to do.  We don’t know a great many people here.  Mrs. Hadden Cressy and I are old friends, but we don’t see much of each other.  I suppose you know the Cressys?”

“I know of them very well.  They are among our most valuable people.  I have often wanted to know Mr. and Mrs. Cressy.  Their son, Tom, I used to see often as a boy, but of late I rarely come across him.  What’s become of him?  He was one of the nicest boys I ever knew.”

Mrs. Swink’s hands made expressive gesture, but the girl at the window gave no sign of hearing me.  In her face, however, I saw color creep, saw also that she bit her lips.

“Nobody knows what he does with himself.”  Mrs. Swink sighed.  “After all the money his father spent on his education, and after everybody took him up, he dropped out of society and stuck at his business as if he didn’t have a cent in the world.  He hasn’t any ambition.  He could go with the most fashionable people in town, if his parents can’t, but he won’t do it.  He must be a great disappointment to his parents.”

With a slow movement of her shoulders, Miss Swink turned and looked at her mother, in her eyes that which made me sit up.  What the look implied I was unable altogether to understand, but I could venture a guess at it, and on the venture I spoke: 

“He’s the pride of their life, I’ve been told.  Any parents would be proud of such a son—­that is, if they were the kind of parents a son could be proud of.  I’d like to see Tom.  I used to be very fond of him when he was a boy.  He lived just back of us and he and Kitty were great friends as children.  I’m afraid he’s forgotten me, however.”

“No, he hasn’t—­” Miss Swink stopped as abruptly as she began, but the color that had crept into her face at mention of Tom Cressy’s name now crimsoned it, and again she turned her head away.  In her eyes, however, I had caught the gratitude flashed to me, and quickly I decided I must see her alone, talk to her alone; and so absorbed was I in wondering how I could do it that only vaguely did I hear Mrs. Swink, who was telling me of various engagements already made, of the difficulty of getting in what had to be gotten in between being manicured and marcelled and massaged and chiropodized and tailored and dress-makered, and had she not been so interested in the telling she would have discovered I was not at all interested in the hearing.  She did not discover.

When for the third time I saw Miss Swink glance at the watch upon her wrist, and then out of the window, I knew she was waiting for some one to pass.  It wasn’t Harrie.  There was no necessity for furtive watching for Harrie to pass, The latter’s plaint of sickness was evidently not convincing to the girl.  I looked at the clock on the mantel.  I had been in the room twenty-seven minutes, but I didn’t agree with Selwyn that Miss Swink was in love with his brother.  Her engagement to him was due, I imagined, not so much to her literalness as to her mother’s management.  An unholy desire to demonstrate that the latter was not of a scientific kind possessed me, and quickly my mind worked.