To the older women, no callow youth but a man of discernment, discretion, wit and fancy and daring, who remembered birthdays husbands forgot, who was always round when wanted.
There was no vanity back of these premises.

Cutty was merely reaching about for an expedient to thwart what to his anticipatory mind promised to be an inevitability.

Of course the glamour would not last; it never did, but he felt he could sustain it until yonder chap was off and away.
That evening at five-thirty Kitty received a box of beautiful roses, with Cutty's card.
"Oh, the lovely things!" she cried.
She kissed them and set them in a big copper jug, arranged and rearranged them for the simple pleasure it afforded her.

What a dear man this Cutty was, to have thought of her in this fashion! Her father's friend, her mother's, and now hers; she had inherited him.

This thought caused her to smile, but there were tears in her eyes.