pital. She had finally married a rich New York man
of the same name. So she had heard.

The tea to which Jack and Corinne were invited was the result of this
conversation. Trust Miss Felicia for doing the right thing and in the
right way, whatever her underlying purpose might be; and then again she
must look this new protege over.

Peter at once joined in the project. Nothing pleased him so much as
a function of any kind in which his dear sister was the centre of
attraction, and this was always the case. Was not Mrs. McGuffey put to
it, at these same teas, to know what to do with the hats and coats,
and the long and short cloaks and overshoes, and lots of other things
beside--umbrellas and the like--whenever Miss Felicia came to town? And
did not the good woman have many of the cards of the former function
hidden in her bureau drawer to show her curious friends just how grand
a lady Miss Felicia was? General Waterbury, U.S.A., commanding the
Department of the East, with headquarters at Governors Island, was one
of them. And so were Colonel Edgerton, Judge Lambert and Mrs. Lambert;
and His Excellency the French Ambassador, whom she had known as an
attache and who was passing through the city and had been overjoyed to
leave a card; as well as Sir Anthony Broadstairs, who expected to spend
a week with her in her quaint home in Geneseo, but who had made it
convenient to pay his respects in Fifteenth Street instead: to say
nothing of the Coleridges, Thomases, Bordeauxs and Worthing tons,
besides any number of people from Washington Square, with plenty more
from Murray Hill and be yond.

Peter in his enthusiasm had made a mental picture of a repetition of all
this and had already voiced it in the suggestion of these and various
other prominent names, "when Miss Felicia stopped him with:

"No, Peter--No. It's not to be a museum of fossils, but a garden full of
rosebuds; nobody with a strand of gray hair will be invited. As for the
lame, the halt and the blind, they can come next week. I've just been
looking you over, Peter; you are getting old and wrinkled and pretty
soon you'll be as cranky as the rest of them, and there will be no
living with you. The Major, who is half your age"--I had come early, as
was my custom, to pay my respects to the dear woman--"is no better. You
are both of you getting into a rut. What you want is some young blood
pumped into your shrivelled veins. I am going to hunt up every girl I
know and al