help if I ask her. She is very obliging to me – I belong to the royal family too, you know," she said archly.
"Together we can get her to lend her influence to Mrs. Hilbrough," said Millard, "or at least to attend the reception. And I think I know how the whole thing can be managed."
"I am so glad, and so much obliged to you, Mr. Millard," said Phillida, a gleam of enthusiastic feeling, almost childlike, suddenly showing itself through the grave exterior. This little revelation of the self shut within the disciplined self without puzzled Millard and piqued the curiosity he felt to understand what manner of young girl this was, habitually so self-mastered, and apparently so full of unknown power or of unawakened sensibilities. An apprehension of potencies undeveloped in Miss Callender gave her new acquaintance the feeling of an explorer who stands on the margin of a land virgin and unknown, eager to discover what is beyond his sight. For Millard's main interest in life lay in the study of the personalities about him, and here was one the like of which he had never seen. The social naturalist had lighted on a new genus.
Mrs. Hilbrough returned with her husband, and Millard explained to her that a certain Baron von Pohlsen, a famous archæologist, was at that time in Mexico studying the remains of Aztec civilization with the view of enriching the pages of his great work on the "Culturgeschichte" of the ancient Americans. He was to return by way of New York, where his money had been remitted to the Bank of Manhadoes, and he had been socially consigned to Mr. Millard by a friend in Dresden. Pohlsen was obliged to observe some economy in traveling, and had asked Millard to find him a good boarding-house. If Mrs. Hilbrough cared to receive the Baron as a guest for a fortnight, Millard would advise him to accept the invitation, and, as far as possible, would relieve Mr. Hilbrough of his share of the burden by taking the Baron about. This would furnish Mrs. Hilbrough with a good excuse for giving a reception to the nobleman, and then, without any appearance of pushing, she could invite people far afield.
It was not in the nature of things that a woman in Mrs. Hilbrough's position should refuse to entertain a baron. She saw many incidental advantages in the plan, not the least of which was that Mr. Millard would be a familiar in the house during the Baron's stay. Hilbrough acquiesced with a rueful sense that he should be clumsy enough at entertaining a foreigner and a man of title. Mrs. Hilbrough thanked Millard heartily for his obliging kindness, but what he cared most for was that Miss Callender's serious face shone with pleasure and gratitude.
Having accepted another invitation for the evening, Millard took his leave soon after ten o'clock, proposing to come at a later time to help Mrs. Hilbrough – "and Miss Callender, I hope," he added with a bow to Phillida – to make up the list. Having but two blocks to go, he declined, in favor of Miss Callender, the Hilbrough carriage, which stood ready at the door.
The close carriage, with only Phillida for occupant, rattled down Fifth Avenue to Madison Square, and along Broadway to Union Square, then over eastward by Fourteenth street, until after a turn or two it waked the echoes rudely in a quiet cross street, stopping at length before a three-story house somewhat antique and a little broader than its neighbors. Phillida closed and bolted the outer doors, and then opened one of the inner ones with a night-key, and made her way to what had been the back parlor of the house. In that densification of population which proceeds so incessantly on Manhattan Island this old house, like many another, was modernly compelled to hold more people than it had been meant for in the halcyon days when Second Avenue was a fashionable thoroughfare. The second floor of the house had been let, without board, to a gentleman and his wife, and the rooms above to single gentlemen. The parlor floor and the basement were made to accommodate the mother and her two daughters with their single servant. The simple, old back parlor, with no division but a screen, had two beds for mother and daughters, while the well-lighted extension made them a sitting room in pleasant weather. Mrs. Callender clung to one luxury persistently – there was always a grate fire in the back parlor on cold evenings.
To this back parlor came Phillida with a disagreeable sense that Mrs. Hilbrough's retreating carriage was rousing the quiet neighborhood as the sleepy and impatient coachman banged his way over the pavement, the hummocky irregularities of which saved this thoroughfare from all traffic that could avoid it; for only the drivers of reckless butcher carts, and one or two shouting milkmen, habitually braved its perils.
Phillida, as she approached the old-fashioned mahogany door of the back parlor, in the dim light shed by the half-turned-down gas jet at the other end of the hall, raised her hand to the knob; but it eluded her, for the door was opened from within by some one who stood behind it. Then the head of a girl of seventeen with long, loose blond tresses peered around the edge of the door as Phillida entered.
"Come in, Philly, and tell us all about it," was the greeting she got from her sister, clad in a red wrapper covering her night-dress, and shod with worsted bedroom slippers. "Mama wanted me to go to bed; but I knew you'd have something interesting to tell about the Hilbroughs, and so I stuck it out and kept mama company while she did the mending. Come now, Philly, tell me everything all at once."
The mother sat by the drop-light mending a stocking, and she looked up at Phillida with a gentle, brightening expression of pleasure – that silent welcome of affection for which the daughters always looked on entering.
"What, mama, not in bed yet?" exclaimed Phillida, as she laid off her outer garments, and proceeded to bend over and kiss her mother, trying to take away her work at the same time. "Come now, you ought to be in bed; and, besides, this old stocking of mine is darned all over already, and ought to be thrown away."
"Ah, Phillida," said her mother with a sweet, entreating voice, holding fast to the stocking all the time, "if it gives me pleasure let me do it. If I like to save old things I'm sure it's no harm."
"But you ought to have been in bed at nine o'clock," said Phillida, her hold on the stocking weakening perceptibly under the spell of her mother's irresistible entreaty.
"It will take but a minute more if you will let me alone," was all the mother said as Phillida released the work, and the elaborate darning went on.
"There's a good deal more darn than stocking to that now," said the younger sister. "It's a work of genius. I'll tell you, Phillida: we'll take it to the picture framer's to-morrow and have it put under glass, and then we'll get a prize for it as a specimen of fancy work at the American Institute Fair. But now tell me, what did you have for dinner? How many courses were there? Was there anybody else there? What sort of china have they got? Do they keep a butler? How does Mr. Hilbrough take to the new fixings? And, oh, say! are they going to give any parties? And – "
"Give me a chance, Frisky, and I'll answer you," said Phillida, who began at the beginning and told all that she could think of, even to describing the doilies and finger-bowls.
"You said there was a gentleman there. Who was he?" said Agatha, the younger.
"That Mr. Millard that Cousin Phil is so fond of. He is at Aunt Harriet's often on Sunday evenings. He's a good looking young man, dressed with the greatest neatness, and is very polite to everybody in an easy way."
"Did he talk with you?"
"Not at first. He paid as much attention to Mrs. Hilbrough as he could have paid to a queen; treating her with a great deal of deference. You could see that she was pleased. Just think, he asked me if I liked Wagner's music."
"How did you get out of it?"
"I didn't get out of it at all. I just told him I had never heard anything of Wagner's. But when he found that I was Mrs. Gouverneur's niece it made things all right with him, and he made as handsome a speech about my great-grandfather and all the rest as Aunt Harriet could have done herself."
"Wasn't Mrs. Hilbrough surprised to hear that you were somebody?"
"I don't know."
"Well,
