"Indeed?" answered Mrs. Gray, flushing and with difficulty keeping back the tears of disappointment. To think a nephew of hers could have turned out like this! "Do you play football?" demanded Hippy abruptly. "Really, I don't care for the game," answered Thomas. "It's awfully rough, don't you know." "Perhaps you prefer baseball?" suggested Grace. "No," continued the young man, "I can't say I do. The truth is, I don't like outdoor games at all." "What do you like, then?" demanded Nora, giving him a glance of ineffable scorn. "I like afternoon tea," he answered, "and bridge." Reddy almost groaned aloud, but he remembered his manners and choked his outburst of disgust. "It is a pity," said Tom's aunt, turning her nearsighted blue eyes on him in amazement and displeasure. "Our Oakdale boys are all athletes. Even David here, the scholar and inventor, I'll venture to say, knows football and baseball as well as his friends." "I'm not much of an inventor, Mrs. Gray," protested David. "You know my airship tumbled down before it got half way across the gym. But I shall never lose hope." "Ah, airships?" exclaimed Thomas Gray, and deliberately taking a monocle from his pocket, he stuck it in his eye and stared at David, who choked and sputtered in his glass of water, while Hippy dropped a fork that fell on his plate with a great clatter. Mrs. Gray raised her lorgnette and looked at her nephew. "Thomas," she said sternly, "don't wear that thing here. It's not the custom in this town or in this country, for that matter. If you are nearsighted, buy yourself a pair of spectacles." "Certainly, aunt, certainly; it shall be as you wish," replied Thomas, without a tinge of embarrassment. "I am so unused to America, you know." Then Nora relieved the painful situation by laughing. She was taken with the giggles and she laughed till the tears rolled down her cheeks. The others laughed, too, even Mrs. Gray, who felt that she might give way to hysterics at any moment. After dinner Thomas Gray detained his aunt in another room, while the girls and boys returned to the parlor. The two were closeted together for some time, and when they finally appeared, Mrs. Gray looked strangely flushed and nervous. But there was a smile on her nephew's thin lips and a dangerous flicker in his crafty eyes. "I'll stake my last cent he's been getting money out of his poor little aunty," said David to Grace. "He's just the kind to do it." "Poor Mrs. Gray!" exclaimed Grace. "I am so sorry for her. You can't think how she's been planning this party for months. Why did she ever ask down that wretch of a nephew? David, do try and make friends with him. Maybe there's something good in him after all, and it will help things along if Mrs. Gray feels that we want to like him." "All right," promised David. "It goes against my grain to talk with a Miss Nancy dandy like that. It gives me a feeling in my chest like indigestion and bronchitis combined--but I'll make the effort."