Hope Benham Part 17

"Of course they do. I hate to dance with a girl; that's one reason I don't like a girl-party. I never can remember which I am, the boy or the girl, when the figures are called, and I'm just as likely to prance out in the square dances as a girl when I'm taking the boy's place, and to set off in a waltz with the wrong foot, and muddle things generally.

Then we girls see girls all the time, or we see so much more of girls than we do of boys that we like a change, or _I_ do. I dare say the rest of you," making up a defiant little face, "don't feel like this at all.

I dare say you had just as lief dance with girls, and wouldn't care if you never had boys at _your_ parties."

"Oh, yes, we would; _we_ like currants and raisins in our cake, too, don't we, Hope?"

"Yes, indeed," laughed Hope.

"You'd have thought so last year if you could have seen Hope with my youngest brother, my little eleven-year-old," continued Kate, merrily.

"He thought Hope was just perfect, and the way he followed her up! He wasn't in the least bashful, like some of the older boys, and he didn't have the slightest hesitation in trotting after her. _I_ believe he asked her to dance every dance with him. I know I had to interfere and curb his ardor, or Hope wouldn't have danced with anybody else, for she really encouraged him in his attentions in the most decided manner."

"He was such a dear little fellow," said Hope,--"he told me I was just as good company as a boy."

When the laugh that this called forth had subsided, Dorothea said rather soberly, "I didn't know that you had such _young_ boys."

"Look at her, look at her!" cried Kate. "Did you ever see such a worried, disappointed face? But cheer up, Dorothea, cheer up; we _do_ have a few older ones. My brother Schuyler will be here this year."

"Oh!" exclaimed Hope, with a falling inflection to her voice, "and not Johnny?"

"And not Johnny," laughed Kate; "one at a time, you know."

"How old did you say your brother Schuyler is?" asked Dorothea.

"Seventeen,--quite old, you see, for a boy. He'll do for you to dance with, won't he?"

"Johnny dances beautifully; one couldn't have a better partner," said Hope.

"Oh, 'tisn't only a dancing partner Dorothea wants," spoke up Bessie Armitage, a keen-eyed, keen-witted girl, whose quiet observation was never very much at fault. "Dorothea wants a talking partner as well."

Dolly gave a little conscious giggle, and simperingly declared, with a toss of her head: "Oh, I know what you mean. You mean that I want a flirting partner; people are always accusing me of that, and I--"

"Flirting! how I hate that word, and how I hate the thing itself!" burst out Kate Van der Berg. "It's the cheapest word, and the cheapest thing to do; and for girls like us to put on such airs, and think we are doing something fine and grown-up. My brother Maurice, my oldest brother, has told me enough what young men think of half-grown girls who do such things."

"Oh, yes, I know; you told me, before I went away, how your brother made fun of young girls," cried Dorothea, angrily.

The hot color rose to Kate's very forehead, in her sudden shock of indignation. Then, as it slowly ebbed away, she said in a low, intense tone: "I told you that I had heard my brother tell how men either disliked the pertness of young girls, or else amused themselves by it for a little while, and then made fun of it,--that was what I said to you. He did not say that _he_ made fun of them,--he couldn't do such a thing; and the reason he told me what others did, was to show me how such things were looked upon."

"And you told _me_ because you thought _I_ was one of those pert, forward, bold girls!" snapped out Dorothea.

"I was not telling _you_ what he said, any more than the rest of the girls who were present; and what I told was brought out by something that was said at the time."

"Something that _I_ said, _I_ know. I was talking about my sister's gentlemen friends, and I said that I never found it hard to talk to _them_; and then you--"

"Hush, girls, there's the bell; the company is coming," broke in Myra Donaldson, "and we must get back into the 'drorrin'-room,' as Patrick calls it."

"Yes, it is high time we were all there," said some one here who was coming up from the lower end of the hall. It was Miss Marr.

"I wonder if she has heard any of this talk, and how much of it?"

thought Hope.

But Miss Marr gave no sign of having heard anything of it. She came forward brightly, smiled on this one and that with equal sweetness, and playfully drove them all before her into the long flower-scented room.

The guests were all received in this room; then by twos and threes and fours, after a little interchange of greetings and introductions, they were conducted to the elevator and taken up to the great hall at the top of the house. It was an immense room that Miss Marr had had built several years ago, when her school plan had grown from its first modest limit to a promise of its present more liberal dimensions, and was intended at the start for a gymnasium and play-room. Later it was fitted up so that the gymnastic appliances could be easily removed, and a dance-room or recital-hall made of it upon short notice. On the night of the New Year's parties it always presented a most enchanting aspect, with its flower and fern and palm decorations, and its soft yet brilliant lights. Dolly, to whom it was all new and fresh, cried out enthusiastically as she entered, "Oh, how perfectly beautiful!"

"Isn't it?" agreed another new-comer, a visitor, who was following close upon Dolly's heels; and this visitor was no less a person than our friend Jimmy Dering, who had come on from Boston at Dolly's particular request and to his own particular satisfaction; for now, he argued, "I _may_ stand a chance of hearing 'that girl' play on that Cremona violin."

It was Jimmy's ring at the door-bell that had interrupted that gusty little conversation in the hall. He was the first guest; and as he came into the drawing-room quite alone, and heralded portentously by the solemn butler's loudly spoken "Mr. James Dering," he might have been expected to flinch a little, especially under the battery of all those girls' glances; but Jimmy was not a self-conscious youth, and he had a happy knack of always adjusting himself to circ.u.mstances, and making the best of a trying situation. So now he came forward in his own modest, pleasant way, without a bit of awkwardness; and though he blushed a little, it was with such a confiding sort of manner,--a manner that seemed to say, "Now do be friendly to me,"--that every girl there, including Miss Marr herself, was his friend at once.

"He is charming," thought Miss Marr, "so modest and well-mannered, and with such a bright merry boyishness about him."

Even Dolly couldn't spoil the impression he made, as she put up her head and looked about her with a self-congratulatory air, that said plainly,--

"Now, this is _my_ guest and _my_ cousin!"

No, even Dolly couldn't spoil Jimmy Dering's popularity. People liked him in spite of Dolly, and oftentimes they softened towards Dolly herself, and forgave her her blundering, domineering tactlessness, because she was Jimmy's cousin, as these girls did on this occasion, before the evening was over.

Kate Van der Berg, who had been very wroth at the start, very much disgusted with Miss Dolly, who had felt as if she never wanted to have anything more to do with her, before the evening was over began to say to herself,--

"Dorothea must have some good in her, and must belong to nice people--_really_ nice, well-bred people--to have such a cousin."

And then when the other boy visitors appeared,--when Schuyler Van der Berg, Raymond Armitage, Peter Van Loon, and others of the New York youngsters were in full force,--it was found that they too were taken captive by Jimmy's pleasant ways.

"Nice little chap!" said Schuyler to his great friend, Peter Van Loon.

"Yes," responded Peter; "nicest _Boston_ fellow I've ever seen. Don't like Boston fellows generally, they're so c.o.c.ky."

"And this little chap _might_ be c.o.c.ky, easy. What do you think,--he's the quarter-back in the Puritan eleven!"

"No!" and Peter looked up with greater animation than he had shown since he came into the house.

"And he's c.o.xswain in the Charlesgate boat-crew."

"I say now!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Peter, with increased animation.

"Yes, and he plays the fiddle too,--knows all about music."

Peter rounded his lips into a whistling shape. Then, "How'd you find all this out?"

"His cousin--that big, handsome, black-eyed girl over there, I've just been dancing with--told me."

"That girl with the yellow gown and all those daffodils?"

"Yes."

"She _is_ handsome, and she knows how to dance."

"Yes, she knows how to dance, but she rattles too much."

"But she knows how to dance," repeated Peter, "and I'm going to ask her to dance with me in the Virginia reel. I always get mixed up in those old-fas.h.i.+oned things; but this girl will fetch me through, I know."