you know Mrs. Allen?"

I was unacquainted with this influential personage, but I assented
vaguely to the proposition. Mrs. Allen's emissary was good-humoured and
familiar, but rather appealing than insistent (she remarked that if her
friend _had_ found time to come in the afternoon--she had so much to do,
being just up for the day, that she couldn't be sure--it would be all
right); and somehow even before she mentioned Merrimac Avenue (they had
come all the way from there) my imagination had associated her with that
indefinite social limbo known to the properly-constituted Boston mind as
the South End--a nebulous region which condenses here and there into a
pretty face, in which the daughters are an "improvement" on the mothers
and are sometimes acquainted with gentlemen more gloriously domiciled,
gentlemen whose wives and sisters are in turn not acquainted with them.

When at last Mrs. Nettlepoint came in, accompanied by candles and by a
tray laden with glasses of coloured fluid which emitted a cool tinkling,
I was in a position to officiate as master of the ceremonies, to
introduce Mrs. Mavis and Miss Grace Mavis, to represent that Mrs. Allen
had recommended them--nay, had urged them--just to come that way,
informally and without fear; Mrs. Allen who had been prevented only by
the pressure of occupations so characteristic of her (especially when up
from Mattapoisett for a few hours' desperate shopping) from herself
calling in the course of the day to explain who they were and what was
the favour they had to ask of her benevolent friend. Good-natured women
understand each other even when so divided as to sit residentially above
and below the salt, as who should say; by which token our hostess had
quickly mastered the main facts: Mrs. Allen's visit that morning in
Merrimac Avenue to talk of Mrs. Amber's great idea, the classes at the
public schools in vacation (she was interested with an equal charity to
that of Mrs. Mavis--even in such weather!--in those of the South End) for
games and exercises and music, to keep the poor unoccupied children out
of the streets; then the revelation that it had suddenly been settled
almost from one hour to the other that Grace should sail for Liverpool,
Mr. Porterfield at last being ready. He was taking a little holiday; his
mother was with him, they had come over from Paris to see some of the
celebrated old buildings in England, and he had telegraphed to say that
if Grace would star