“I have met the elder one, I suppose.”

“No.  That was a cousin, Lispenard Ogden.  He spoke of meeting you.  You would be amused to hear his comment about you.”

“Mr. Stirling doesn’t like to have speeches repeated to him, Dorothy,” said Miss De Voe.

“What do you mean?” asked Dorothy, looking from one to the other.

“He snubbed me the other evening when I tried to tell him what we heard, coming out of the convention last autumn,” explained Miss De Voe, smiling slightly at the thought of treating Peter with a dose of his own medicine.

Peter looked at Miss De Voe.  “I hope you don’t mean that?”

“How else could I take it?”

“You asked me if I wished something, and I merely declined, I think.”

“Oh, no.  You reproved me.”

“I’m very sorry if I did.  I’m always blundering.”

“Tell us what Lispenard said, Dorothy.  I’m curious myself.”

“May I, Mr. Stirling?

“I would rather not,” said Peter.

And Dorothy did not tell him, but in the drawing-room she told Miss De Voe: 

“He said that except his professor of archaeology at Heidelberg, Mr. Stirling was the nicest old dullard he’d ever met, and that he must be a very good chap to smoke with.”

“He said that, Dorothy?” exclaimed Miss De Voe, contemptuously.

“Yes.”

“How ridiculous,” said Miss De Voe.  “Lispenard’s always trying to hit things off in epigrams, and sometimes he’s very foolish.”  Then she turned to Miss Leroy.  “It was very nice, your knowing Mr. Stirling.”

“I only met him that once.  But he’s the kind of man somehow that you remember.  It’s curious I’ve never heard of him since then.”

“You know he’s the man who made that splendid speech when the poor children were poisoned summer before last.”

“I can’t believe it!”

“It’s so.  That is the way I came to know him.”

Miss Leroy laughed.  “And Helen said he was a man who needed help in talking!”

“Was Mrs. D’Alloi a great friend of his?”

“No.  She told me that Watts had brought him to see them only once.  I don’t think Mr. Pierce liked him.”

“He evidently was very much hurt at Watts’s not writing him.”

“Yes.  I was really sorry I spoke, when I saw how he took it.”

“Watts is a nice boy, but he always was thoughtless.”

In passing out of the dining-room, Dorothy had spoken to a man for a moment, and he at once joined Peter.

“You know my sister, Miss Ogden, who’s the best representative of us,” he said.  “Now I’ll show you the worst.  I don’t know whether she exploited her brother Ogden to you?”

“Yes.  She talked about you and your brother this evening.”

“Trust her to stand by her family.  There’s more loyalty in her than there was in the army of the Potomac.  My cousin Lispenard says it’s wrecking his nervous system to live up to the reputation she makes for him.”