Volume II Part 22 (1/2)
”Ah, Mrs. Rumbullion! Happy to see your niece, too. How d'ye do, Miss Pilgrim?”
At this last word Billy jumped as if he had been shot, and the bevy of ladies opening about sister Lu disclosed the charming face and figure of the pretty girl we had met at Barnum's.
Billy's countenance rapidly changed from astonishment to joy.
”Isn't that splendid, Uncle Teddy? Just as I was wis.h.i.+ng it! It's just like the fairy books!” and, rus.h.i.+ng up to the party of new-comers, ”My dear Lottie!” cried he, ”if I'd only known you were coming I'd have gone after you!”
As he caught her by the hand I was pleased to see her soft eyes brighten with gratification at his enthusiasm, but my sister Lu looked on naturally with astonishment in every feature.
”Why, Billy!” said she, ”you ought not to call a strange young lady'
_Lottie_!' Miss Pilgrim, you must excuse my wild boy.”
”And you must excuse my mother, Lottie,” said Billy, affectionately patting Miss Pilgrim's rose kid, ”for calling you a strange young lady.
You are not strange at all,--you're just as nice a girl as there is.”
”There are no excuses necessary,” said Miss Pilgrim, with a bewitching little laugh. ”Billy and I know each other intimately well, Mrs.
Lovegrove; and I confess that when I heard the lady aunt had been invited to visit was his mother, I felt all the more willing to infringe etiquette this evening by coming where I had no previous introduction.”
”Don't you care!” said Billy, encouragingly. ”I'll introduce you to every one of our family; I know 'em if you don't.”
At this moment I came up as Billy's reinforcement, and fearing lest in his enthusiasm he might forget the canon of society which introduces a gentleman to a lady, not the lady to him, I ventured to suggest it delicately by saying,--
”Billy, will you grant me the favor of a presentation to Miss Pilgrim?”
”In a minute, Uncle Teddy,” answered Billy, considerably lowering his voice. ”The older people first”; and after this reproof I was left to wait in the cold until he had gone through the ceremony of introducing to the young lady his father and his mother.
Billy, who had now a.s.sumed entire guardians.h.i.+p of Miss Pilgrim, with an air of great dignity intrusted her to my care and left us promenading while he went in search of Daniel. I myself looked in vain for that youth, whom I had not seen since the entrance of the last comers. Miss Pilgrim and I found a congenial common ground in Billy, whom she spoke of as one of the most delightfully original boys she had ever met; in fact, altogether the most fascinating young gentleman she had seen in New York society. You may be sure it wasn't Billy's left ear which burned when I made my responses.
In five minutes he reappeared to announce, in a tone of disappointment, that he could find Daniel nowhere. He could see a light through his keyhole, but the door was locked and he could get no admittance. Just then Lu came up to present a certain--no, an uncertain--young man of the fleet stranded on parlor furniture earlier in the evening. To Lu's great astonishment Miss Pilgrim asked Billy's permission to leave him. It was granted with all the courtesy of a _preux chevalier_, on the condition, readily a.s.sented to by the lady, that she should dance one Lancers with him during the evening.
”Dear me!” exclaimed Lu, after Billy had gone back like a superior being to a.s.sist at the childish amus.e.m.e.nt of his contemporaries, ”Would any body ever suppose that was our Billy?”
”I should, my dear sister,” said I, with proud satisfaction; ”but you remember I always was just to Billy.”
Left free, I went myself to hunt up Daniel. I found his door locked and a light s.h.i.+ning through the keyhole, as Billy had stated. I made no attempt to enter by knocking; but going to my room and opening the window next his, leaned out as far as I could, shoved up his sash with my cane, and pushed aside his curtain. Such an unusual method of communication could not fail to bring him to the window with a rush.
When he saw me he trembled like a guilty thing, his countenance fell, and, no longer able to feign absence, he unlocked his door and let me enter by the normal mode.
”Why, Daniel Lovegrove, my nephew, what does this mean? Are you sick?”
”Uncle Edward, I am not sick,--and this means that I am a fool. Even a little boy like Billy puts me to shame. I feel humbled to the very dust.
I wish I'd been a missionary and got ma.s.sacred by savages. Oh that I'd been permitted to wear damp stockings in childhood, or that my mother hadn't carried me through the measles! If it weren't wrong to take my life into my own hands, I'd open that window, and--and--sit in a draught this very evening! Oh, yes! I'm just that bitter! Oh, oh, oh!”
And Daniel paced the floor with strides of frenzy.
”Well, my dear fellow, let's look at the matter calmly a minute. What brought on this sudden attack? You seemed doing well enough the first ten minutes after we came down. I was only out of your sight long enough to speak to the Rumbullion party who had just come in, and when I turned around you were gone. Now you are in this fearful condition. What is there in the Rumbullions to start you off on such a bender of bashfulness as this which I here behold?”
”Rumbullion indeed!” said Daniel. ”A hundred Rumbullions could not make me feel as I do. But _she_ can shake me into a whirlwind with her little finger; and _she_ came with the Rumbullions!”