But Elsie rose and put on her hat. “Not today. Tomorrow, if you’ll have me. But this is Geoff’s first day at home in over a year. I wish you’d dine with us tonight. Can’t you forget that Geoff is a man and merely think of him as my brother? After all, when you come out you’ll have to meet endless men, and talk to them, too.” Gita gave her a hard stare. “If I thought——” “Oh, no!” Elsie gave her rippling laugh. “I’m no matchmaker, and if I were you’d be the last person on earth whose love-destiny I’d dare have a hand in. I’m not sure you’ll even tolerate Geoff because he’s my brother. I don’t know what he may have done in his off moments but I do know that women don’t interest him and he makes no effort to talk to them. He’s rather silent, even with us. Carving up someone in his mind, I suppose. But I’d like to have you meet him, simply because he is my brother, and you, my dear, have become a part of my life.” Gita kissed her for the first time. It was a peck, but it meant as much, Elsie knew, as the remark that followed. “I’ll come, of course, and I’ll try not to hate him.” CHAPTER XI Elsie had never been able to refurnish her old house, but she could have pink lights in the dining-room, and a bowl of pink roses on the table to draw attention from the worn linen and serviceable plates. Colored servants had long since relieved Mrs. Pelham of the “fine china” and Bohemian glass of palmier days. The simple platters and vegetable-dishes were of indestructible silver and she polished them herself. Gita, whose table was overloaded with massive silver, fit only for a banquet hall, and who had dropped one of the forks on a priceless dish, the fragments removed by a muttering Topper, felt a sharp pang of homesickness: she was reminded of her mother’s pathetic attempts to give beauty to the homeliest surroundings, if the result were but a bowl of wild flowers or a worn but embroidered kimono thrown over the bald sofa of a pension.