Her tone became warm and affluent as she went about asking this person and that to lend things for the great day: Mrs. Edgerton’s Monet, Mrs. Braxton’s brocades; a fur rug of Mrs. Green’s she solicited one noon on the campus as if from a generous impulse to slight no one. And even when Mrs. Green suggested timidly that she would be glad “to pay for having the invitations engraved,” Miss Haviland didn’t correct her. But— “No, dear,” she said. “I think I won’t let you do that much—_really_. There aren’t to be so many, and I shall be able to write them myself in no time.” I can see her now, fingering her pearls and peering as hospitably as she could manage into Mrs. Green’s commonplace eyes, and George Norton hurrying across the grass to catch a word with her without avail. He was the only person whom she was, during those perfervid preliminaries, one bit cruel to. But him she overlooked entirely. She didn’t seem to see him that day at all. She just peered obliquely beyond him, and, engrossed quite genuinely, no doubt, in Mrs. Green’s fur rug, took her arm and strolled off. She had lost, for the time being, all use for him. He was left deserted and alone at the teas and gatherings, magnetized from one spot to another whither she moved forgetfully away. I met him in the park and pitied his shy, inept efforts not to appear neglected. “Well, I kind of think it may rain,” he essayed, half clasping his small hands behind him and looking sociably up around the sky for a cloud. “But I don’t know as it will, after all.” And then, “Have you seen Miss Haviland lately?” he asked out in spite of himself. “Not since yesterday’s class.” “How’s the improvements coming?” “All right, I guess. The new stuff for the walls arrived, I heard. It hasn’t been put on yet.” “Oh—she’s papering, is she?” “And painting.” He tried to sparkle appreciatively. “Well, it takes time to do those things. You never know what you’re in for. She’s well?” And he swayed back and forth on his heels, and teetered his head nervously. Poor thing! The gap he had tried so hard to bridge was filled to brimming now by the promised advent of Hurrell Oaks. Miss Haviland called me on the telephone one afternoon as the day was approaching to ask if I would lend her my samovar; and she wanted I should bring it over presently, if possible, as she was slowly getting things right, and didn’t like to leave any more than was necessary to the last moment. So I polished the copper up as best I could and went ’round that evening to the New Gainsborough to leave it.