What did Mrs. Harrison mean? Why was she thus including them and not Amanthus in these implications and indictments? The four looked at each other, non-plussed and wondering, and for some reason just the least bit disturbed.
Here Mr. Tate was shown in by Hetty. He was exceedingly tall and his cheek-bones were prominent, and so was his earnestness. His skirted coat seemed ponderous and so did he.
Maud, for one, never had cared for Mr. Tate, possibly because he seemed so little aware of her. She was in a gloomy frame of mind anyway, not having cheered up since, so she put it, she'd seen herself as Mr. Welling and his sex saw her. She said afterwards, that this afternoon at the Harrisons only confirmed the point of view. Mr. Tate in his frock coat and his earnestness seemed to provide an outlet for her immediate ill-humor.
"When a person's dressed with all that excess of correctness, he only looks ridiculous," she told Selina, by whom she was sitting.
Amanthus apparently did not think so. She smiled for Mr. Tate and that marvel of a dimple showed and she gave him her soft hand. Mrs. Harrison smiled for him, too, and offered a hand and told him that she and Amanthus had enjoyed his matinée tickets hugely.
"He's never offered us matinée tickets," sotto voce from Maud at Selina's elbow. "That earnestness of his keeps its eye on exactly what it wants and doesn't waste itself elsewhere. He's recognizing we're here now and he's coming to tell us so. That's something to be grateful for."
He shook hands with Adele and called her Miss Adelina. She and her identity always seemed vague to him. He shook hands with Selina and asked her about her mother and her aunt; he shook hands with Juliette. He came to Maud. Her attitude to him at times savored of belligerency. She wasn't fond of persons who ignored her, but as she explained afterward, she hardly had flattered herself he'd noticed this manner.
"Miss Maud," Mr. Tate having said this in recognition of her as he put out his hand, paused, then said the name over again as if struck for the first time with the sound and significance of it. "Miss _Maud_?" consideringly and reflectively. "There's something then in names? Juliette now," with a beneficent wave of the hand in the direction of that pretty, dark, little person, "diminutive of Julia; Amanda, Amanthus, and the further derivatives," he turned and bowed gallantly in the direction of this young lady, "worthy to be loved--Matilda, Matilde, Maud--mighty battle maid."