"Why didn't you come and speak to me?" demanded Phil when they were alone. "I was just waiting for a chance. I didn't want to bother you." "Well, you'll have to do better than this! You're the only person in the house who hasn't spoken to me! But it was nice of you to come: it must be a trouble to come to town at night when you live so far." She sat down in the window-seat and bade him do likewise. "You did see Uncle Amy, didn't you? I saw you talking to him; but you ought to have come earlier while there was a receiving-line ready for you. Now you'll have to look around for everybody; you have to speak to my three aunts and all my uncles and my father." "I'll be glad to," declared Fred; and then realizing the absurdity of his fervor in consenting to speak to the aunts and uncles he laughed. "You're scared," said Phil. "And if you won't tell anybody I'm a little bit scared myself, just because everybody tells me how grown-up I am." The music struck up and a young cavalier--a college senior, who had worshiped Phil since his freshman year--came to say that it was his dance. She told him that she was tired and would have to be excused. He wished to debate the question, but she closed the incident promptly and effectively. "I'm busy talking to Mr. Holton; and I can see you any time, Walter." Walter departed crestfallen; she treated him as though he were still a freshman. He was wearing his first dress-coat and the tallest collar he could buy, and it was humiliating to be called Walter and sent away by a girl who preferred to talk to a rustic-looking person in a cutaway coat and a turnover collar with a four-in-hand tie. Phil carried Fred off for a tour of the rooms, pausing to introduce him to her father and to the three aunts, to whom she said how kind it was of Fred to come; that he was the only person she had personally asked to the party. And it was just like Phil, for years the loyal protector of all the discards among the cats and dogs in town, to choose a clodhopper for special attention. Kirkwood, who had forgotten Fred's existence, greeted him in his pleasant but rather absent way.