“Oh, no, a Brooke of Virginia would never do that; she would be hospitable to a burglar, even while waiting for the police to come for him, and when he left, handcuffed, regret that uncontrollable circumstances prevented his spending the night!” said Lucy, mimicking the tone and manner of an old great-aunt of Brooke’s so thoroughly that she was forced to laugh. “But thou, O most transparent of all the Brookes, even if you have Scotch granite and American steel concealed in your depths, you very well know that Madame Parks would have given many shekels of gold to have had your mother standing on her right this afternoon. Do you realize that she even asked me to sing to-day? Of course I wouldn’t.” “That surely was a compliment to your voice that you can hardly find fault with,” said Brooke, pausing on the threshold to gather together the requisite number of cards. “My voice! That had nothing whatever to do with it My voice might be like a jay’s with its crop full of popcorn, for all she knows about it. No, it was all on account of daddy; this affair has been well thought out. She has been careful to have a representative bidden from every department of the society trust,—clergy, laity, art, music, science. Daddy represents up-to-date financiering,—there is no Mrs. Dean, hence me! She wandered a bit, though, in asking me to sing on the same afternoon with paid professionals. If it had been a very select and spirituelle affair, with Maud Knowles at the harp and Dick Fenton with his Boulevard imitations and songs, followed by bouquets of orchids concealing bijouterie for the performers, I might have yielded. “Yes,” Lucy chattered on, “let us go upstairs; we had better drop our wraps, as we expect to make an afternoon of it. What an apartment! Madame’s, of course. Look at that bed on the dais and a boudoir and breakfast room beyond! Eight maids! Why didn’t she have four and twenty to match the pie blackbirds? Look at the way in which their skirts stay in place behind when they wiggle them. Never saw such a thing off the stage; one straight line from belt to hem, just the stunning way Hilda Spong wears hers in ‘Lady Huntworth’s Experiment’! What is the exhibit in that room across the hall, with the walls draped with white over sky-blue? Everybody is going that way; let us also flock!