Miss Bentley shook her head.  “I don’t see how they could be,” she insisted.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Shows how the Candy Wagon is visited in behalf of the Squirrel, and how pride suffers a fall; how Miss Bentley turns to Vedantic Philosophy to drown her annoyance, and discovers how hard it is to forget when you wish to.

“When I reflect upon the small weight attaching to true worth unsupported by personal charm, I am tempted to turn cynic.”

Dr. Prue closed her bag with a snap and lifted her arms to adjust a hatpin.

“Youth and beauty take the trick, that’s a fact.”  Uncle Bob laughed as if he found it a delicious comedy.

They stood before the office window.  At the gate the Apartment Pigeons were fluttering around Margaret Elizabeth, while her ladyship gravely admonished them for some piece of mischief.

“I believe she is taming the terrors,” remarked the doctor.

“She had them all in the other afternoon,” said Uncle Bob, “sitting cross-legged on the floor like little Orientals, while she told them stories.  Margaret Elizabeth can manage them!” His tone thrilled with pride.

“Yes, and Miss Kitty Molloy will drop anything she has on hand to work for Miss Bentley; the market-man picks out his choicest fruit for her; and so it goes, if you call it managing.  Well, I must be off.  Good-by.”

As Dr. Prue went out, Margaret Elizabeth, having dismissed the pigeons for the time being, came in, and sat down at her desk to finish a letter.

She wrote:  “Yes, Uncle Bob and Cousin Prue argue as much as ever, and I suspect that more often than not I am the subject upon which they disagree.  I am in a state of disagreement about myself, father dear.  Society is absorbing beyond anything I dreamed of, and if I had not promised you to stop and think for at least ten minutes out of the fourteen hundred and forty, I fear I should have already become a real Society Person.”

At this point Uncle Bob looked in.  “Well, how many parties on hand now?” he asked.

Margaret Elizabeth laid down her pen and counted them off on her fingers, beginning with a tea at five, theatre and supper afterward, and so on, till the supply of fingers threatened to become exhausted.

“Go on, I’ll lend you mine,” said Uncle Bob.  “Prue says,” he added, “that it is enough to kill you, but you look pretty strong.”

“She wouldn’t mind if I worked my fingers to the bone for her hospital or the Suffrage Association, but I want a little fun first, Uncle Bob.”  Margaret Elizabeth supported an adorable chin in a pink palm and regarded her relative appealingly.

“That’s what I tell Prue.  It is natural you should like best to stay at Pennington Park, and go about in a splendid machine.  I don’t blame you in the least, and I don’t wish you to feel bound to come down here when you don’t really care to.  Much as I love to have you, I shall not be hurt.”  Uncle Bob nodded at Margaret Elizabeth with a reassuring smile that in spite of intentions was a bit wistful too.