Part 16 (1/2)
”Oh, I'm going to wrap the paper round them, and carry them until just before I get to Aunt Annie's. Wouldn't you?”
”Wouldn't I? I like that!” said Miss Slater, settling her eyegla.s.ses on the bridge of her nose with a finger and thumb. Norma had a momentary pang of sympathy; she could never have been made to understand that a happy barnyard duck may look contentedly up from her pool at the peac.o.c.k trailing his plumes on the wall.
”Norma--for the love of Allah!” Chris shouted from downstairs.
Norma gave a panicky laugh, s.n.a.t.c.hed her fan, wrap, and flowers, and fled joyously down to be criticized and praised. On the whole, they were pleased with her: Alice, seizing a chance for an aside to tell her not to worry about the lowness of the gown, that it was absolutely correct she might be very sure, and Mrs. Melrose quite tremulously delighted with her ward. Chris did not say much until a few minutes before they planned to start, when he slipped a thin, flat gold watch from his vest pocket, and asked speculatively:
”Norma, has your Aunt Kate ever seen you in that rig?”
”No!” she answered, quickly. And then, with less sparkle, ”No.”
”Well, would you like to run in on her a moment?--she'd probably like it tremendously!” said Chris.
”Oh, Chris--I would love it!” Norma exclaimed, soberly, over a disloyal conviction that she would rather not. ”But have we time?”
”Tons of time. Annie's dinners are a joke!”
Norma glanced at the women; Mrs. Melrose looked undecided, but Alice said encouragingly:
”I think that would be a sweet thing to do!”
So it was decided: and Norma was bundled up immediately, and called out excitedly laughing good-byes as Chris hurried her to the car.
”You know, it means a lot to your own people, really to see you this way, instead of always reading about it, or hearing about it!” Chris said, in his entirely prosaic, big-brotherly tone, as the car glided smoothly toward the West Sixties.
”I know it!” Norma agreed. ”But I don't know how you do!” she added, in shy grat.i.tude.
”Well, I'm nearly twice your age, for one thing,” he replied, pleasantly. And as the car stopped unhesitatingly at the familiar door he added: ”Now make this very snappy!”
She protested against his getting out, but he accompanied her all the way upstairs, both laughing like conspirators as they pa.s.sed somewhat astonished residents of the apartment house on the way.
Aunt Kate and Wolf, and Rose and Harry, as good fortune would have it, were all gathered under the dining-room lamp, and there was a burst of laughter and welcome for Norma and ”Mister Chris.” Norma's wrap was tossed aside, and she revolved in all her glory, waving her fan at arm's length, pleasantly conscious of Wolf's utter stupefaction, and conscious, too, a little less pleasantly, that Aunt Kate's maternal eye did not agree with Aunt Annie's in the matter of _decolletage_.
Then she and Chris were on their way again, and the legitimate delights of being young and correctly dressed and dining with the great Mrs. von Behrens, and going to Grand Opera at the Metropolitan, might begin.
Norma had perhaps never in her life been in such wild spirits as she was to-night. It was not happiness, exactly, not the happiness of a serene spirit and a quiet mind, for she was too nervous and too much excited to be really happy. But it was all wonderful.
She was the youngest person at the long dinner table, at which eighteen guests sat in such stately and such separated great carved chairs as almost to dine alone. Everyone was charmingly kind to the little Melrose protegee, who was to be introduced at a formal tea next week. The men were all older than Leslie's group and were neither afraid nor too selfishly wrapped up in their own narrow little circle to be polite.
Norma had known grown young men, college graduates, and the sons of prominent families, who were too entirely conventional to be addressed without an introduction, or to turn to a strange girl's rescue if she spilled a cup of tea. But there was none of that sort of thing here.
To be sure, Annie's men were either married, divorced, or too old to be strictly eligible in the eyes of unsophisticated nineteen, but that did not keep them from serving delightfully as dinner partners. Then Aunt Annie herself was delightful to-night, and joined in the general, if unexpressed, flattery that Norma felt in the actual atmosphere.
”Heavens--do you hear that, Ella?” said Annie, to an intimate and contemporary, when Norma shyly asked if the dress was all as it should be--if the--well, the neck, wasn't just a little----? ”Heavens!” said Mrs. von Behrens, roundly, ”if I had your shoulders--if I were nineteen again!--you'd see something a good deal more sensational than that!”
This was not the sort of thing one repeated to Aunt Kate. It was, like much of Annie's conversation, so daring as to be a little shocking. But Annie had so much manner, such a pleasant, a.s.sured voice, that somehow Norma never found it censurable in her.
To-night, for the first time, Hendrick von Behrens paid her a little personal attention. Norma had always liked the big, blond, silent man, with his thinning fair hair, and his affection for his sons. It was of his sons that he spoke to her, as he came up to her to-night.
”There are two little boys up in the nursery that don't want to go to sleep until Cousin Norma comes up to say good-night,” said Hendrick, smiling indulgently. Norma turned willingly from Chris and two or three other men and women; it was a privilege to be sufficiently at home in this magnificent place to follow her host up to the nursery upstairs, and be gingerly hugged by the little silk-pajamed boys.