Part 10 (2/2)

A cross-eyed cow would have had a good time at that Thanksgiving ball.

There were so many stags and all of them seemed so eager to dance that the girls were really overworked. Wink and Harvie introduced many University of Virginia men to us and we had the honour of dancing with every member of the football team who was able to hobble. George Ma.s.sie, poor Sleepy, who had been so wide awake on the gridiron and so unconscious of himself, in the ball room was overcome with shyness. He was a very good dancer if he did break through a crowd with somewhat the manner of a centre rush. He danced with Annie Pore wherever he could get to her and when some eager swain tried to break in he would seize her in his mighty grasp and bear her away with about the same ease he would a football. If opponents went down under and before him, why then next time they would know better than get in his way.

Annie looked very lovely. The faithful white crepe de chine had been cleaned and was still doing its duty. I heard many persons ask who she was and especially eager did the public seem to establish her ident.i.ty when the great and only Hiram G. Parker singled her out for his attentions.

”Does she belong in Richmond?”

”She is sure to be a next year's belle with this start she is getting with Hiram G.”

”I can't see what he sees in her. She has no style to speak of and that dress is plainly last year's model,” this from a lady whose daughter was what put in my mind the remark I just made about cross-eyed cows. You felt she was led out to dance only because of the superfluity of males.

”Now that Miss Binks from Newport News,” continued the mystified lady, ”that girl has some style and you can see why Hiram G. took a fancy to her. Of course those Binkses are common as pig tracks but the mother is well connected and they do say that old Binks has made money hand over fist. Mrs. Garnett met her at Willoughby and asked her up to visit her.

You may be sure she is rich because we know she has no claim to being an aristocrat. Park Garnett demands either blood or money.”

All of this I overheard between dances. I was standing on the edge of the crowd with Wink White with whom I had been laboriously dancing. I never could dance with Wink; we never seemed to be able to get in step.

I knew it was his fault and he thought it was mine. He would persist, however, in asking me to dance. The conversation of the chaperones was rather embarra.s.sing to both of us as Mabel was Wink's cousin, his family being the good connection that Mrs. Binks could boast of, and Mrs.

Garnett was my cousin. We were forced, though, to hear more as we were wedged in near them for a few moments.

”They do say that Jeffry Tucker is paying Miss Binks a lot of attention.

I saw her in his car at the game to-day and my daughter tells me that the girl is begigged about him. She actually broke a partial engagement with Hiram G. Parker to go somewhere with Mr. Tucker last week.”

”Well, well! She looks fit to cope with those Heavenly Twins!”

”Oh! They aren't so bad now. They do say they are toned down a lot.

School has been good for them.”

”They never were to say bad--just wild and harum-scarum. I'd hate to think Jeffry Tucker would give his girls such a young stepmother. They need some middle-aged person.”

”Yes, but poor Jeffry! Can't you see him tied to some middle-aged person? He is too young a man to marry for his children's sake.”

”Well, he's too old a man to marry a girl right out of school and expect his daughters to respect her.”

I was certainly glad to start dancing again even with the four-footed Wink. It is a strange thing what makes a good dancer. Some of the most awkward-looking persons dance beautifully and, vice versa, some very graceful ones are as stiff as pokers on the ballroom floor. Now Wink was a very well set up young man, tall, broad shouldered, with an erect carriage, almost soldierly in his bearing. It is all right to walk like a soldier but to dance the way a soldier walks is not so exemplary. Wink always had a kind of ”Present arms! March!” manner and a girl does not like to be held and carried around like a musket.

Dee declared she thought Wink was a good dancer and she could make out finely with him, and thank goodness, Wink had found this out and broke in on Dee more than he did on me. I liked to talk to him; he was a very bright, agreeable young man with original ideas and lots of ambition. If only his ambition had not directed his attentions to me! I could not get over a certain embarra.s.sment with him occasioned by the ridiculous proposal he had made me while we were at Willoughby. He had said to me then that he did not know how much he loved me until he saw me with my hair done up like a grown-up, and I had joked and told him that I could not judge of my feelings for him until he grew a moustache. He had immediately left off shaving his upper lip and now, to my confusion, every time I looked at him there bristled a very formidable moustache.

Wink was very good looking, with nice blue eyes and a straight nose. I don't know why it seemed such a huge jest for him to be trying to make love to me. Lots of girls my age had devoted lovers, at least according to their accounts they did. I was almost seventeen and it would be rather fun, I thought, to encourage him and even have a ring to put very conspicuously on my left hand on the engagement finger, but when I thought of his ”lollapalussing” ways that night on the piazza at Willoughby I just knew I could not stand it.

”Lollapalussing” was a Tweedles word and meant sentimental spooning and a hand-holding tendency. We used that word at Gresham to describe the girls who have a leaning, clinging-vine way of flopping on you. Our quintette was very much opposed to lollapalussers, male or female. I fancy when you are very much in love that lollapalussing is not so bad, but then I wasn't at all in love, certainly not with Wink.

Father had taken a great fancy to Wink and the attraction seemed mutual.

They talked together a great deal, and even at the ball when the young man was not dancing with either Dee or me, he would seek out Father, who was looking on at the dancing with great interest, and the two evidently found much to converse about.

”Page,” said Father, coming up to me as I was standing for a moment with Mr. Tucker, after a most glorious dance in which not once had we missed step or b.u.mped into any one, ”I have asked Mr. White down to Bracken for a visit during the Christmas holidays. I want him to see the country,”

<script>