"
"Did you know, then, that Mr. Hammond would be there?"
"No, I had not the least idea that piece of luck would fall in my way.
Meta managed that for me most delightfully. You know, girls, how
earnestly the poor dear Elliot-Smiths aspire, and how vain are their
efforts, to get into what we are pleased to call the 'good set' here.
It isn't their fault, poor things, for, though they really have no
talent nor the smallest literary desires, they would give their eyes
to be 'hail-fellows-well-met' with some of our intellectual giants.
Well, Meta got to know Mr. Hammond at a tennis party in the summer,
and when she met him last week she asked him to come to her house
to-day. She told me she was dying to have him, of course, but when she
asked him she could see by his face and manner that he was searching
his brains for an excuse to get out of it. All of a sudden it flashed
into her head to say, 'Some of our friends from St. Benet's will be
present.' The moment she said this he changed and got very polite and
said he would certainly look in for a little while. Poor Meta was so
delighted! You can fancy her chagrin when he devoted himself all the
time to Prissie."
"He thought he'd meet Maggie Oliphant," said Annie Day; "it was a
shame to lure him on with a falsehood.
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