"Mr. McAllister presents his compliments to Miss Harlowe, and would beg to say that he feels an explanation due him for Miss Harlowe's action of Saturday night. If Miss Harlowe will permit, he will do himself the honor of calling this evening to hear from her personally of what offense he has been guilty to call forth so marked a token of her displeasure."

     Eunice read it over twice, the crimson spot in either cheek growing deeper as she read; then she handed it to Lucy and said:
     "I wish you would read it, Lucy, and tell me what I must do. Don't you think it would be better to write my apology? He has given me the opportunity, I think, by his note."
     Lucy read it also carefully; then she said slowly, and with no idea that she was innocently playing into Rex's hand:
     "No, I don't think I would. You see, he particularly requests a personal explanation, and unless you have some well-defined excuse, it is easier to make things clear and all right again by talking them over. It is so easy to be misunderstood in writing."
     "Yes," said Eunice; "but it is because I haven't any excuse–only an apology–that I thought I would rather write; but perhaps it will be better to see him."
She went to her writing-table, got out some paper from the drawer, and took up her pen:
     "What shall I say? I really don't know how to write it."
     Notes were of small moment to Lucy; she had any number of them neatly piled away in her little desk: invitations for concerts, for lectures, for driving parties to the mountains or the springs, for walks to the barracks or the cave, for Sunday-evening church, for Wednesday-evening pray-meeting or Saturday-evening choir rehearsal–all of which were included in the list of Bellaire gaieties. So she answered lightly:
     "Oh, I would make it as brief and formal as possible. 'Miss Harlowe's compliments to Mr. McAllister, and would be happy to see him this evening.' "
     Eunice obeyed, and the note was written, sealed, and given to "Judge," patiently waiting in the hall.

     Dr. and Mrs. Charlton were spending the evening out at a faculty tea-party given by the senior professor in West College.
     I wonder if anywhere in the world in these days of form and fashion and late dinners people get together and have such good times as they used to at those old faculty tea-parties. "Tea" now is associated in our minds with a crush and jam, light refreshments, and lighter talk, but it meant something very different in those days. It meant sitting down comfortably to a long table covered with snowy damask and shining with polished silver and glass and dainty china. There was sure to be a noble platter of fried chicken at one end of the table if it were the season when chickens were young enough to fry; not broiled, but cooked as only the good old darky cooks of our youth could cook them: fried to a crisp golden brown, and covered with an unctuous cream gravy of the same color. If it was not possible to find sufficiently young chicken for the pièce de resistance, the same noble platter was filled with fried oysters, golden brown also, and hot and tender and not greasy, and the oysters flanked by a beautifully decorated dish of chicken-salad, made after the recipe of Professor Tiffin himself, the epicure of the faculty–"little vinegar and less mustard; much cayenne pepper and more oil." And whether chicken or oysters were in the platter, there were always waffles, so light and crisp that the most sensitive dyspeptic need not fear them, with bowls of mixed cinnamon and sugar to eat with them for those who liked it; and there was also, always, hot Maryland biscuit, snowy with just a delicate tinge of the necessary brown, and innocent of soda or yeast powder or any other death-dealing drug; and of course there were wonderfully concocted pickles, and shaking jellies glowing like rubies, and rich preserves; and for the second course a little very nice cake and such fruit as happened to be in season, from scarlet strawberries to luscious peaches, served with thick yellow cream–though the second course was of little moment in the mind of a good Bellaire housekeeper compared with the substantials. And to crown the feast there was always coffee, hot and clear and strong enough, with the exquisite flavor of the Mocha easily distinguishable, and rich with cream. Indeed, the coffee was a test of any Bellaire tea-party, and the anxious hostess never felt that her supper was a complete success until the gentlemen, and even some of the ladies, began to send up for a second cup of her "delicious coffee."
     But there was no lack of a finer kind of entertainment also at these teas. The creature comforts, far from deadening the intellect, seemed to stimulate the flow of wit and reason. There might possibly be a little formality and dullness while the company were gathering in the "front parlor," and the ladies were all more or less in sympathy with the hostess's anxiety in the critical moments preceding supper, and the husbands were insensibly sensitive to the mood of their wives. But from the moment they were all seated at the table, husbands scrupulously separated from wives–from that moment until ten o'clock, when, exact almost to the minute, they said good night, there was a constant ripple of gentle hilarity.
     Professor Tiffin was host this evening, and he readily proved himself, not an epicure only, but also a most polished man of the world, who could discourse delightfully on the latest literature or the society news from Baltimore and Philadelphia, the centers of fashion for Bellaire. Opposite him at the head of the table sat Mrs. Tiffin, a pale, aristocratic-looking blonde, who bore the enviable reputation of being able to cook a dinner or entertain a parlorful of guests with equal ease and skill. And there were Professor Fieldman and his wife, two jovial souls who for months had been keeping up a running wager as to who should tell the most and the best stories. And there was the bachelor professor, a big, fine-looking man well up in his forties, with a magnificent head covered with Jove-like curls. He had a beautiful old lady for a mother, and two bright and handsome sisters; and it was for their sakes, no doubt, that he had never married, though he seemed to enjoy his single estate and the freedom it gave him to worship moderately at many shrines, and to display to untrammeled advantage his two talents–for be was an accomplished musician, and even more accomplished in conversation.
     Perhaps conversation is not quite the right word to apply to Professor Haywood's brilliant monologues. There was no doubt about their brilliance: they were well worth listening to, scintillating with wit, studded with epigram, flashing on every subject in the wide range of literature and philosophy; but sometimes, if you liked to talk yourself, you found them just a little tiresome. There had been rumors that if Miss Lydia McNair, who was an heiress in her own right, would have looked kindly on him, he would have gracefully submitted to matrimonial bonds; but we never knew certainly, for Miss Lydia kept her own counsel in such matters, and the professor was not likely to publish his defeats. Certain it is that they were still on terms of amity, and although he no longer haunted the McNair parlors as he had once done, he went there at intervals, and it was reported that she treated him with as much nonchalance as she did any of her younger beaux, and had been known more than once to interrupt his most brilliant flight with a saucy, "Now, professor, you rest awhile and let me talk."
     Then there were the professor's two charming sisters, always, of course, included in faculty parties. Miss Kate was a dashing brunette, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, with all the wit of her brother, but so toned down by the feminine desire to please and kept in bounds by feminine intuition, that warned her at once if she were in danger of becoming a bore, that she was as fascinating as she was beautiful. I remember as a child we used to sing a song beginning, "Miss Kate was once a laughing girl, Eyes of jet and teeth of pearl," and I never for a moment doubted that the song referred to beautiful Miss Kate Haywood. Her sister, Meta, was of a more stately type: fair and large, with dignified composure of manner. She had a way of listening with such sympathy and apparent comprehension as to give the impression that she had herself been talking most learnedly or wittily, as the case might be. I never remember to have heard her utter more than the most ordinary commonplaces, but the tone of their utterance wag always so well chosen and they were delivered with such an air that I do not think that at the time they impressed me as commonplace at all. It was this talent of hers as a sympathetic listener that had, no doubt, won for her the reputation of being quite a Madame de Staël in learning and wit.
     There was another bachelor professor in the faculty: a Johnsonian style of man, big and ungainly of person, pompous and uncouth of manner, but of undoubted learning and ability. It seemed to be always Miss Meta's lot to sit next him at the faculty teas, and by a judicious use of her eyes and pretty smile, and a proper distribution of "Noes," "Yesses," and " Indeeds!", she produced such an impression on the honest and impressionable heart of the awkward scholar that he invariably found an opportunity later in the evening to say to one or two of the married members of the faculty, "I find Miss Meta a most charming young lady. Does it ever strike you that she is–ah–in fact–erudite?"; and the professor in, whom he happened to repose this confidence as invariably responded with some jocose suggestion that it was time for him to be thinking seriously of giving up his bachelor freedom and making some charming woman happy by joining the ranks of the Benedicts,–which suggestion the professor always received seriously, though somewhat sheepishly, and promised to think of it. As nothing ever came of these periodical seizures, it is to be presumed that the next morning, in his comfortable study, surrounded by his beloved books, the vision of the fair charmer faded until the next faculty tea.
     But any description of any kind of faculty party would be very incomplete without a mention of the two Misses Perkins. They did not properly belong to the faculty by any consanguineous connection with that charmed circle; but no faculty dame would have dared to give a function, however small and informal, without including them in the list of invitations. Two splendid New England women, born in another century, and belonging even in my childhood to a fast passing generation; of an imposing presence and an elegance and propriety of manner that would have enabled a discriminating stranger to have conjectured at once that they were at the head of a young ladies' boarding-school. The educating and polishing of young ladies had been their life-work, and from Maine to Georgia they were widely known as elegant women and distinguished educators.
     Miss Caroline rather overshadowed her younger sister, Miss Phoebe; for Miss Phoebe, by virtue of being the younger, had come to be regarded both by herself and her sister as perennially youthful, and cherished the modest and girlish graces they both considered suitable to her. I never believed that this was an intentional affectation on Miss Phoebe's part; it was the force of long-continued attitude. So, while Miss Caroline discussed ably the topics of the day with the men she met, giving clear-cut views on all subjects, Miss Phoebe sat primly by with folded hands and an amiable smile of attention in her faded blue eyes.
     Miss Caroline was broad of frame and almost masculine in the effect of strength her physique gave. Her eyes were gray and still keen, rarely needing the assistance of glasses, though she never hesitated to use them if they seemed necessary. She always wore on her hair, iron-gray and her own, a square of black-thread lace with long side-tabs to which was added on party occasions a little purple ribbon; or if the party was an unusually fine one, the purple was lightened to lavender. Her dress was invariably of black silk, stiff and shiny, with straight voluminous skirts, finished at the neck with a rather small but rich lace collar fastened with a cameo brooch. In the very plainness of her dress she impressed one with her strength verging on masculinity.
     Miss Phoebe, on the other hand, had all the small feminine likings for gay ribbons and soft laces, and as far as possible she tried to follow the prevailing mode. Now that hoops were in, she had timidly ventured on a small one, though she felt every time it caught on an obtrusive door-scraper–which was not seldom–that she was wearing it at the risk of her life. Her skirts were flounced to her waist; her sleeves were wide to admit of pretty under-sleeves, and the surplus opening of her bodices was filled in with soft blond or delicate lace. Her caps, too, were butterfly creations, caught up at irregular angles with tiny bunches of narrow pink-satin ribbons, and resting on a false front of richest chestnut hue. As for her eyes, they had long since lost their keenness of vision with their luster, but Miss Phoebe preferred all the inconvenience and uncertainty of half-blindness rather than confess to glasses.
     Dear soul! who that has a heart can find fault with that tender clinging to the romance of her girlhood? I never heard that Miss Phoebe had ever had a lover, but it is enough to know that she was once sixteen and had all the pure, sweet, timid dreams of a possible lover that are as much a part of those bright, unfolding years as the fragrance is of the rose. And it is not impossible to realize it of Miss Phoebe, in spite of her faded eyes, the primly set mouth, the rigidly erect and angular figure with no trace of girlish grace remaining. There is a suggestion of it, like the faint perfume that still clings to withered rose-petals, in the modest folding of the snowy lace across the maidenly bosom, and in the rosy tint of the ribbons in her cap. But my imagination refuses to conceive of Miss Caroline as ever having had a girlhood filled with dream-lovers or real ones. I might easily fancy her a boy playing at football, or "shinny," but a coy and sensitive maiden–never!
     And now these were the prominent members of that old faculty circle gathered about Mrs. Tiffin's table that Monday evening, including, of course, our dear and genial Dr. Charlton, without whom every gathering would have lost its center of sunshine and warmth, for that was the effect of his ready flow of kindly wit and gentle humor; and his beautiful wife, whose sparkling vivacity and gracious ways charmed us almost as much as her radiant beauty.
     And this night at Mrs. Tiffin's the little company did not break up promptly at ten. It was the first social gathering of the season, and they had all the long vacation experiences to compare. Some of them had been to the mountains, and some to the sea; Professor and Mrs. Tiffin in Europe; Professor Haywood at White Sulphur Springs, where he was sure to meet the fashion and beauty of the South; and his brother bachelor professor buried in the British Museum, delving among its archives for material for his book that he had been faithfully at work upon for years.
     And when it was almost time to be going Professor Fieldman challenged Dr. Charlton to a game of chess, and that was one of the good doctor's weaknesses in which he yet found little time to indulge, and which Mrs. Charlton encouraged as little as she did his other weakness for punning. It seemed to her a great waste of time to pore over a chess-board for hours, when one might be reading some charming book or enjoying a delightful dish of conversation.
     Mrs. Tiffin, noting the doctor's wistful look, and perceiving that he was about to decline, added her persuasions to the professor's, and herself arranged the little chess-table in a quiet corner where they would neither interrupt the flow of talk nor be disturbed by it. And as the hour of ten came and passed and the little circle saw their head sitting unmoved by the cuckoo-chime that proclaimed the hour, they ventured to linger a little, too. But they could not feel perfectly at ease after that admonitory sound, and so conversation languished, and gradually, one by one, the ladies withdrew to Mrs. Tiffin's room to put on their bonnets, and the gentlemen formed a half-circle around the players and silently watched the game. And that is one of the essential differences between men and women. Whoever saw a circle of women watching a game in which they could have no hand! They go to base-ball and to foot-ball, but it is not the game that attracts them: it is the gay and eager crowds. As a rule, all the daughters of Eve must have their finger in the pie or the flavor is not to their liking.
     A rustle of skirts and a gentle murmur of voices at length proclaimed the return of the ladies, and Mrs. Charlton floated up to the table where her husband sat, his finger laid along his nose, his eyes fixed on the board, oblivious to everything else in the world. The game was at a critical point, and, almost to the horror of the interested circle of spectators, she laid her hand lightly on the doctor's shoulder:
     "My dear, do you know it is almost half-past ten?" she said.
     "Impossible!" ejaculated the doctor, never taking his eyes from the board, nor in any way moving a muscle not required by the act of articulation.
     "Yes, dear, and we must be going."
     "Wait one moment, my love," said the doctor, putting his fingers on his king and then venturing to glance hurriedly up at her.
     The board was clear of men, except Professor Fieldman's king, the doctor's king, and one knight, with which he had been vainly striving for a checkmate: Professor Fieldman's king stood on his rook's square, the doctor's knight on the bishop's second, and his king on the knight's second; there was no use of struggling longer; the doctor moved his king to the bishop's first and proclaimed a stalemate with quite an air of triumph, for the professor was a player of some repute, and kept in good practice by his wife, who was as fond of chess as she was of stories. Then the doctor arose, flushed with success, made his courtly apology to Mrs. Tiffin for keeping such late hours, and said his pleasant "good night" to every one else.
     Half-way across the long walk between West and East College they heard the sharp click of the little gate in the hedge, and a little further on they passed some one who took off his hat and made a low bow. It was dark and the doctor could not recognize him.
     "My dear," he said, "that seems to be some one coming from our house. Could you tell who it was?"
     "I think it was Mr. McAllister," she answered; "but it seems to me he has been staying rather late."
     "Mr. McAllister!" said the doctor; "I did not know he called on Lucy; I thought it was always you he came to see."
     "Oh, he calls on Lucy sometimes," said Mrs. Charlton; "but I fancy this time it was not Lucy, but Eunice."
     "Ah, to be sure–of course!" said the doctor.