Jack said, “Of course,” but he did not look relieved.  The clever creature divined the situation without another word, for there was no turn in the Street that she was not familiar with.  But there was no apparent recognition of it, except in her sympathetic tone, when she said:  “Well, the world is full of annoyances.  I’m bothered myself—­and such a little thing.”

“What is it?”

“Oh nothing, not even a rumor.  You cannot do anything about it.  I don’t know why I should tell you.  But I will.”  And she paused a moment, looking down in an innocent perplexity.  “It’s just this:  I am on the Foundlings’ Board with Mrs. Schuyler Blunt, and I don’t know her, and you can’t think how awkward it is having to meet her every week in that stiff kind of way.”  She did not go on to confide to Jack how she had intrigued to get on the board, and how Mrs. Schuyler Blunt, in the most well-bred manner, had practically ignored her.

“She’s an old friend of mine.”

“Indeed!  She’s a charming woman.”

“Yes.  We were great cronies when she was Sadie Mack.  She isn’t a genius, but she is good-hearted.  I suppose she is on all the charity boards in the city.  She patronizes everything,” Jack continued, with a smile.

“I’m sure she is,” said Carmen, thinking that however good-hearted she might be she was very “snubby.”  “And it makes it all the more awkward, for I am interested in so many things myself.”

“I can arrange all that,” Jack said, in an off-hand way.  Carmen’s look of gratitude could hardly be distinguished from affection.  “That’s easy enough.  We are just as good friends as ever, though I fancy she doesn’t altogether approve of me lately.  It’s rather nice for a fellow, Mrs. Henderson, to have a lot of women keeping him straight, isn’t it?” asked Jack, in the tone of a bad boy.

“Yes.  Between us all we will make a model of you.  I am so glad now that I told you.”

Jack protested that it was nothing.  Why shouldn’t friends help each other?  Why not, indeed, said Carmen, and the talk went on a good deal about friendship, and the possibility of it between a man and a woman.  This sort of talk is considered serious and even deep, not to say philosophic.  Carmen was a great philosopher in it.  She didn’t know, but she believed, it seemed natural, that every woman should have one man friend.  Jack rose to go.

“So soon?” And it did seem pathetically soon.  She gave him her hand, and then by an impulse she put her left hand over his, and looked up to him in quite a business way.

“Mr. Delancy, don’t you be troubled about that rumor we were speaking of.  It will be all right.  Trust me.”

He understood perfectly, and expressed both his understanding and his gratitude by bending over and kissing the little hand that lay in his.