! Only the English who have been presented at court are
invited and there's a girl at the Savoy Hotel I've met--Lady Claire
Montfort--who wasn't presented because she was in mourning for her
grandmother last year, and she is simply furious about it. An old
dowager here said that there ought to be similar distinctions among
the Americans--that only those who had been presented at the White
House ought to be recognized. Fancy making the White House a social
distinction!" laughed the daughter of the Great Republic.

"I wonder," said Billy, "if I met a nice Turkish lady, whether she
would get me an invitation? Then we could have another waltz----"

"There aren't any Turkish ladies there," uttered Miss Beecher
rebukingly. "Don't you know that? When they are on the
Continent--those that are ever taken there--they may go to dances
and things, but here they can't, although some of them are just as
modern as you or I, I've heard, and lots more educated."

"You speak," he protested, "from a superficial acquaintance with my
academic accomplishments."

"Are you so very--proficient?"

"I was--I am Phi Beta Kappa," he sadly confessed.

Her laugh rippled out. "You don't look it," she cheered.

"Oh, no, I don't look it," he complacently agreed. "That's the lamp
in the gloom. But I am. I couldn't help it. I was curious about
things and I studied about them and faculties pressed honors upon
me. I am even here upon a semi-learned errand. I wanted to have a
look at the diggings a friend of mine is making at Thebes and
several looks at the dam at Assouan, for I am by way of being an
engineer myself--a beginning engineer."

"You have been up the Nile, then?"

"Yes, I'm just back. Now I'm going to see something of Cairo before
I leave."

"We start up the Nile day after to-morrow," said she.

"The day after--" he stopped.

'Twas ever thus. Fate never did one good turn but she sneaked back
and jabbed him unawares. She was a tricksy jade.

"That's--that's gloomy luck," said Billy, and felt outraged. "Why,
how about that Khedive ball thing