commingled.
A tall, thin servant relieved him of his hat, coat and umbrella
and he found himself face to face with Jill Trumbull, who
apparently was on the look-out for him—a smooth, curly-
haired blonde girl, not too thrillingly pretty, but brisk and
smart, in white satin with arms and shoulders bare and
rhinestones banded around her forehead.
“No trouble to tell who you are,” she said gayly,
approaching and giving Clyde her hand. “I’m Jill Trumbull.
Miss Finchley hasn’t come yet. But I can do the honors just
as well, I guess. Come right in where the rest of us are.”
She led the way into a series of connecting rooms that
seemed to join each other at right angles, adding as she
went, “You do look an awful lot like Gil Griffiths, don’t you?”
“Do I?” smiled Clyde simply and courageously and very
much flattered by the comparison.
The ceilings were low. Pretty lamps behind painted shades
hugged dark walls. Open fires in two connecting rooms cast
a rosy glow upon cushioned and comfortable furniture.
There were pictures, books, objects of art.
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469
“Here, Tracy, you do the announcing, will you?” she called.
“My brother, Tracy Trumbull, Mr. Griffiths. Mr. Clyde
Griffiths, everybody,” she added, surveying the company in
general which in turn fixed varying eyes upon him, while
Tracy Trumbull took him by the hand. Clyde, suffering from
a sense of being studied, nevertheless achieved a warm
smile. At the same time he realized that for the moment at
least conversation had stopped. “Don’t all stop talking on
my account,” he ventured, with a smile, which caused most
of those present to conceive of him as at his ease and
resourceful. At the same time Tracy added: “I’m not going
to do any man-to-man introduction stuff. We’ll stand right
here and point ’em out. That’s my sister, Gertrude, over
there talking to Scott Nicholson.” Clyde noted that a small,
dark girl dressed in pink with a pretty and yet saucy and
piquant face, nodded to him. And beside her a very de
rigueur youth of fine physique and pink complexion nodded
jerkily. “Howja do.” And a few feet from them near a deep
window stood a tall and yet graceful girl of dark and by no
means ravishing features talking to a broad-shouldered and
deep-chested youth of less than her height, who were
proclaimed to be Arabella Stark and Frank Harriet. “They’re
arguing over a recent Cornell-Syracuse foot-ball game …
Burchard Taylor and Miss Phant of Utica,” he went on
almost too swiftly for Clyde to assemble any mental notes.
“Perley Haynes and Miss Vanda Steele … well, I guess
that’s all as yet. Oh, no, here come Grant and Nina
Temple.” Clyde paused and gazed as a tall and somewhat
dandified-looking youth, sharp of face and with murky-gray
eyes, steered a trim, young, plump girl in fawn gray and
with a light chestnut braid of hair laid carefully above her
forehead, into the middle of the room.
“Hello, Jill. Hello, Vanda. Hello, Wynette.” In the midst of
these greetings on his part, Clyde was presented to these
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470
two, neither of whom seemed to pay much attention to him.
“Didn’t think we’d make it,” went on young Cranston
speaking to all at once. “Nina didn’t want to come, but I
promised Bertine and Jill or I wouldn’t have, either. We
were up at the Bagleys’. Guess who’s up there, Scott. Van
Peterson and Rhoda Hull. They’re just over for the day.”
“You don’t say,” called Scott Nicholson, a determined and
self-centered looking individual. Clyde was arrested by the
very definite sense of social security and ease that seemed
to reside in everybody. “Why didn’t you bring ’em along? I’d
like to see Rhoda again and Van, too.”
“Couldn’t. They have to go back early, they say. They may
stop in later for a minute. Gee, isn’t dinner served yet? I
expected to sit right down.”
“These lawyers! Don’t you know they don’t eat often?”
commented Frank Harriet, who was a short, but broad-
chested and smiling youth, very agreeable, very good-
looking and with even, white teeth. Clyde liked him.
“Well, whether they do or not, we do, or out I go. Did you
hear who is being touted for stroke next year over at
Cornell?” This college chatter relating to Cornell and shared
by Harriet, Cranston and others, Clyde could not
understand. He had scarcely heard of the various colleges
with which this group was all too familiar. At the same time
he was wise enough to sense the defect and steer clear of
any questions or conversations which might relate to them.
However, because of this, he at once felt out of it. These
people were better informed than he was—had been to
colleges. Perhaps he had better claim that he had been to
some school. In Kansas City he had heard of the State
University of Kansas—not so very far from there. Also the
University of Missouri. And in Chicago of the University of
Chicago. Could he say that he had been to one of those—
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471
that Kansas one, for a little while, anyway? On the instant
he proposed to claim it, if asked, and then look up
afterwards what, if anything, he was supposed to know
about it—what, for instance, he might have studied. He had
heard of mathematics somewhere. Why not that?
But these people, as he could see, were too much
interested in themselves to pay much attention to him now.
He might be a Griffiths and important to some outside, but
here not so much—a matter of course, as it were. And
because Tracy Trumbull for the moment had turned to say
something to Wynette Phant, he felt quite alone, beached
and helpless and with no one to talk to. But just then the
small, dark girl, Gertrude, came over to him.
“The crowd’s a little late in getting together. It always is. If
we said eight, they’d come at eight-thirty or nine. Isn’t that
always the way?”
“It certainly is,” replied Clyde gratefully, endeavoring to
appear as brisk and as much at ease as possible.
“I’m Gertrude Trumbull,” she repeated. “The sister of the
good-looking Jill,” a cynical and yet amused smile played
about her mouth and eyes. “You nodded to me, but you
don’t know me. Just the same we’ve been hearing a lot
about you.” She teased in an attempt to trouble Clyde a
little, if possible. “A mysterious Griffiths here in Lycurgus
whom no one seems to have met. I saw you once in
Central Avenue, though. You were going into Rich’s candy
store. You didn’t know that, though. Do you like candy?”
“Oh, yes, I like candy. Why?” asked Clyde on the instant
feeling teased and disturbed, since the girl for whom he
was buying the candy was Roberta. At the same time he
could not help feeling slightly more at ease with this girl
than with some others, for although cynical and not so
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472
attractive, her manner was genial and she now spelled
escape from isolation and hence diffidence.
“You’re probably just saying that,” she laughed, a bantering
look in her eyes. “More likely you were buying it for some
girl. You have a girl, haven’t you?”
“Why—” Clyde paused for the fraction of a second because
as she asked this Roberta came into his mind and the
query, “Had any one ever seen him with Roberta?” flitted
through his brain. Also thinking at the same time, what a
bold, teasing, intelligent girl this was, different from any that
thus far he had known. Yet quite without more pause he
added: “No, I haven’t. What makes you ask that?”
As he said this there came to him the thought of what
Roberta would think if she could hear him. “But what a
question,” he continued a little nervously now. “You like to
tease, don’t you?”
“Who, me? Oh, no. I wouldn’t do anything like that. But I’m
sure you have just the same. I like to ask questions
sometimes, just to see what people will say when they don’t
want you to know what they really think.” She beamed into
Clyde’s eyes amusedly and defiantly. “But I know you have
a girl just the same. All good-looking fellows have.”
“Oh, am I good-looking?” he beamed nervously, amused
and yet pleased. “Who said so?”
“As though you didn’t know. Well, different people. I for one.
And Sondra Finchley thinks you’re good-looking, too. She’s
only interested in men who are. So does my sister Jill, for
that matter. And she only likes men who are good-looking.
I’m different because I’m not so good-looking myself.” She
blinked cynically and teasingly into his eyes, which caused
him to feel oddly out of place, not able to cope with such a
girl at all, at the same time very much flattered and
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