Page:Jean Webster--Much ado about Peter.djvu/189

Rh description of the lady's character. She ended by bidding him wait for an answer. He heard her say, as she swept down the veranda:

"Excuse me a moment while I answer this note. It's from Ethel Carter, Jerome Carter's daughter, you know"—evidently this was a name to conjure with—"an invitation to meet Lord Kiscadden. It should have come three days ago, but their man stupidly forgot to deliver it. He is begging me not to report him, though I feel that such carelessness really ought to be punished." She rustled on into the house, and Peter sat for twenty minutes flicking the flies from Trixy's legs.

"An' she's a daughter o' Tim McGarrah!" he repeated to himself. There had been nothing snobbish about Tim; he was hail-fellow-well-met with every voter east of Broadway. "She's ashamed of him now," Peter reflected, "and won't let on she ever heard the name; but the old man was ten times more a gentleman than his daughter is a lady, for all his saloon!"