“Why, of course, Mr. Mavering; I shall be delighted,” said Mrs. Brinkley, with a hospitality rendered reckless by her sympathy with the young fellow.  “By all means!”

“Oh; thanks!—­thank you aver so much!” said Dan.  “I’ll bring them to you—­they’ll understand!” He slipped into the crowd again.

Corey made an offer of going.  Mrs. Brinkley stopped him with her fan.  “No—­stay, Mr. Corey.  Unless you wish to go.  I fancy it’s the people you were talking about, and you must help me through with them.”

“I ask nothing better,” said the old man, unresentful of Dan’s having not even seemed to see him, in his generous preoccupation.  “I should like to see how you’ll get on, and perhaps I can be of use.”

“Of course you can—­the greatest.”

“But why hasn’t he introduced them to his Pasmers?  What?  Eh?  Oh!” Corey made these utterances in response to a sharper pressure of Mrs. Brinkley’s fan on his arm.

Dan was opening a way through the crowd before them for two ladies, whom he now introduced.  “Mrs. Frobisher, Mrs. Brinkley; and Miss Wrayne.”

Mrs. Brinkley cordially gave her hand to the ladies, and said, “May I introduce Mr. Corey?  Mr. Mavering, let me introduce you to Mr. Corey.”  The old man rose and stood with the little group.

Dan’s face shone with flattered pride and joyous triumph.  He bubbled out some happy incoherencies about the honour and pleasure, while at the same time he beamed with tender gratitude upon Mrs. Brinkley, who was behaving with a gracious, humorous kindliness to the aliens cast upon her mercies.  Mrs. Frobisher, after a half-hour of Boston society, was not that presence of easy gaiety which crossed Dan’s path on the Portland pavement the morning of his arrival from Campobello; but she was still a handsome, effective woman, of whom you would have hesitated to say whether she was showy or distinguished.  Perhaps she was a little of both, with an air of command bred of supremacy in frontier garrisons; her sister was like her in the way that a young girl may be like a young matron.  They blossomed alike in the genial atmosphere of Mrs. Brinkley and of Mr. Corey.  He began at once to make bantering speeches with them both.  The friendliness of an old man and a stout elderly woman might not have been their ideal of success at an evening party, used as they were to the unstinted homage of young captains and lieutenants, but a brief experience of Mrs. Bellingham’s hospitality must have taught them humility; and when a stout, elderly gentleman, whose baldness was still trying to be blond, joined the group, the spectacle was not without its points of resemblance to a social ovation.  Perhaps it was a Boston social ovation.

“Hallo, Corey!” said this stout gentleman, whom Mrs. Brinkley at once introduced as Mr. Bellingham, and whose salutation Corey returned with “Hallo, Charles!” of equal intimacy.

Mr. Bellingham caught at the name of Frobisher.  “Mrs. Major Dick Frobisher?”