Then she introduced him to several ladies, while Mrs. Fisher, always the mainspring of the executive committee, a keen, thin, birdlike woman, swift of motion and of a graceful presence, but prone to settle moot points with a decisive and not altogether amiable peck, gave him no attention, but darting from group to group devoted herself wholly to the business in hand. She seemed altogether oblivious, too, of Mildred's whims, which were to her an old story. Seldom, indeed, had Mildred Fisher looked more audaciously sparkling. Her fairness was enhanced by the black velvet facing of her white Leghorn turban, encircled with one of those beautiful long white ostrich plumes then so much affected that, after passing around the crown, fell in graceful undulations over the equivocal locks and almost to the shoulder of her black-and-white checked walking suit of "summer silk," trimmed with a narrow black-and-white fringe. "Grandma sent these socks and shirts--" she said officiously, taking a bundle from a neat colored maid who had followed her--"and I brought my thimble--here it is--golden gold--and a large brass thimble for Mr. Seymour. You wouldn't think he has so much affinity for brass--to look at him now! I intend to make him sew, too. Mrs. Clinton, I know you think I am just _awful_," turning apologetically upon the very old lady her sweet confiding eyes. "But--oh, Mrs. Warren--before I forget it, I want to let you know that your son was _not_ wounded in that Bear-grass Creek skirmish at all. I have a letter from one of my brothers--brother number four--and he says it is a mistake; your son was not hurt, but distinguished himself greatly. Here's the letter. I can't tell you _how_ it came through the lines, for Lieutenant Seymour might _repeat_ it; he has the l-o-n-g-e-s-t tongue, though you wouldn't think it, to see him now, speechless as he is." Lieutenant Seymour rallied sufficiently to protest he couldn't get in a word edgewise, and Mrs. Gwynn, with her official sense of hospitality and a real pity for anything that Millie Fisher had undertaken to torment on whatever score, adopted the tone of the conversation, and said with a smile that he might consider himself "begged and prayed" to remain.