"But as I can't go myself, Angela, you see ..." Angela concealed her disappointment as best she could. She was a sweet-natured girl; moreover, Cousin Mary, after all, was the only person who had tried to do anything for her. Nevertheless, her disappointment was keen, and touched with a little irritation at Cousin Mary's attitude. Her cousin, Mr. Garrott, Mr. Manford, and herself--they made a natural table of bridge, a little coterie of friends and relatives who instinctively met together now and then for congenial diversion. It did seem rather hard that Cousin Mary should spoil it all, with this firm stand against all social enjoyment. Only she and Mr. Garrott, it seemed, cared for a little wholesome pleasure. And undoubtedly this attitude of Cousin Mary's did reduce the bridge-party to a rather precarious position. Of course Jennie Finchman could be secured for the other girl, or even Fanny Warder; but as for the man to fill Mr. Manford's place, that was a more difficult matter. "I'm awfully sorry _you_ can't come, Cousin Mary," she was saying in her soft voice. "Mr. Garrott'll be _so_ disappointed. He admires you so much--indeed, he does! He told me so only yesterday." "Oh!" said Mary Wing; and added, as if it were a part of the same sentence--"yesterday! You're seeing a good deal of him now?" "Oh, yes! We have a walk or something nearly every day." "He's quite attractive, don't you think?" The girl answered without self-consciousness: "Oh, I do--he's the nicest thing! And so cunning-looking, too!--isn't he?" "I've always been intrigued, I admit," said the school-teacher, "by the three brown freckles on his nose." She was looking with admiration at her cousin's fresh youthfulness, so unmarked by experience, so innocent of knowledge of fierce conflicting ideas. And Mary looked with a kind of compunction, too. She had honestly wished and tried to "do something" for Angela; but, alas, she herself had been so long and completely out of things that few connections remained to her now, such as would assist to launch a somewhat belated début. She had her hands full enough trying to do something of that sort with Donald, an eligible man. Still-- "Oh, Angela, here's a thought!" she said, suddenly. "If you'll only make a decently long visit, you'll be almost certain to see Donald here! He drops in nearly every afternoon to see the babies, you know--" "Oh!--does he?" "You never imagined such a goose as he is over them. And then you could ask him to the party, in--in a casual way." Angela cheered up at once. Of course, if she could meet and ask Mr. Manford in a casual way, it would be different. And it must be admitted that Mr. Tilletts, who had hovered in the background of her mind, did seem a rather remote possibility. So the talk passed easily from the bridge-party to Fanny Warder, and other lesser matters.