five sharp."
"Really! How _very_ fortunate we are! But, oh, why didn't you come a
little earlier and charitably help us through the wait? We've had
nothing on earth to do but read and reread 'The Cynic's Book of Girls.'"
"Had I ventured to hope that you were to be here," said he, with a
little bow--and was there the slightest, most daring stress upon the
pronouns?--"you may be sure I should have arrived long ago."
Carlisle, dauntless, looked full at him and laughed audaciously.
"I recall you now as a maker of the very prettiest speeches. And the
worst of it is--_I_ like them!... Mamma," she added, with fine, gay
courage, "it is sad to go just as the guests arrive. Yet don't you
think, really--"
"I'm afraid we must, my dear. Willie's evidently--"
But the need for tactics was fortunately at an end. If Carlisle had
drawn it rather fine, it was yet not too fine. The door flew open, and
in bounded Willie. Destiny climbed to the wheel once more.
Willie, though heated with hurry and worry, handled the situation
loyally and well, expressing just the right amount of surprise at the
coincidental assemblage, in just the right places. Of his detention at
the bank (where, as we may infer from his long incumbency, he discharged
a tellership to the complete satisfaction of the depositing public), he
spoke in bitter detail.
"If you'll excuse the French, ma'am," he summed up, "a man might's well
be in hell as ten cents out."
"Why, I do think, Willie," said Mrs. Heth, "that rather than take all
that trouble, I should simply have paid the ten cents from my own pocket
and said no more about it."
But even Willie, perfect host though he was, did not see his way clear
at the moment to explaining the banking system to a lady.
"You might call it sporting pride, ma'am," he said, patiently, and
proposed a little tour of the rooms.
The tour, in the nature of the case, was a little one, almost a fireside
tour, and soon over. Willie simply did not have the material to spin it
out indefinitely. Then refreshments were hospitably insisted on:
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