Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/276

 "Are all your people out to-night? I was in luck!—I mean," he corrected himself, "I was in luck that you should not have gone too."

"They have all gone to town to hear Nilsson."

"I wonder how they managed to leave the musician of the family at home." The situation made him unconventional.

"Father could only get four tickets," she answered simply.

Dr. Winship suddenly remembered that he had always associated this girl with household cares, that he had found her on three separate occasions established as night-nurse in a sick-room, that when he had called socially, he had invariably been told that Mary Anne was "playing backgammon with Father" or was "up-stairs with Mother." A feeling of indignation got the better of him.

"Miss Spencer?" he asked, "do you never by any chance have any good times?"

Mary Anne gave her questioner a surprised look. Then she replied with a sort of apologetic dignity:

"I always have a good time."

"Is that so? Then you are the first person I ever knew who got her exact deserts."

Having thus relieved his mind, the visitor discreetly left personalities alone. They fell to—talking of music and of Germany, of foreign people and remote things, and for one reason or another, both these young people became entirely