THE BALL.
I can't fancy that the time will ever come when I shall be too jaded to
be thrilled at the mere mention of a ball. On that Thanksgiving evening
it seems to me I had every thrill that can come to a girl. I had been to
but few dances--the one at the Country Club the winter before and the
hop at Willoughby were the only real ones, and this grown-up ball with
the lights and music and the handsomely gowned women and dapper men made
me right dizzy with excitement. The twins took a ball as rather a matter
of course, having been dancing around with their young father ever since
they could toddle, but Annie's eyes were sparkling with joy and Mary
Flannagan, who was very bunchy in "starch paper blue" taffeta, the very
stiff kind with many gathers around her waist, was jumping up and down,
keeping time to the music.
Mary, with all her bunchiness, was an excellent dancer and as light on
her feet as a gas balloon, (if a gas balloon could have feet). Sometimes
her voluminous skirts had quite the appearance of a balloon and seemed
to buoy her up. Mary was so frank and honest and gay that every one had
to like her, and, strange to say, boys, who as a rule are quite snobbish
about appearances and insist on a certain amount of beauty or style in
the girls they go with, all liked Mary and she never lacked for a
partner at a dance. She was so amusing and witty that they lost sight of
her freckled face and scrambled red hair. Mary had good hard common
sense, too, and such a level head that we were very apt to ask her
advice on every subject in spite of the fact that she was many months
younger than any of us.
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 Massie,
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 identity
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 embarrassing 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 embarrassment 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 bumped 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,"
putting his hand affectionately on Wink's shoulder. "He is thinking of
settling in the country after he gets his M.D., and has some hospital
practice, and I am looking out for some one to throw my mantle on, as it
were."
"Oh--ye--that would be fine," I stammered, and I hate myself yet for
blushing like a fool rose. Zebedee saw it and he looked so sad, just
exactly as he had the winter before when Mr. Reginald Kent asked Dum for
a lock of her hair. I did wish I could make him understand that it made
not a whip stitch of difference to me where Wink White settled. That I
was nothing but a little girl and did not care a bit for beaux, except,
of course, for dancing partners, and maybe a candy beau or two. Every
girl wants that kind. But as for serious, young, would-be doctors
growing moustaches and coming to settle in our end of the county--it
made me tired. I did not know how to let my kind friend know it did,
though, and as just then the chrysanthemum-headed giant from Carolina,
the one I had seen weeping on the field after the game, came up to claim
a dance, I had to leave. A moment afterwards I had the doubtful pleasure
of seeing Zebedee engaged in the gyrations of some new fangled dance
with the beaming Mabel Binks in his arms.
Mabel was certainly looking handsome. "I'll give it to her," as Mammy
Susan says when she admits something pleasant about any one for whom she
has no regard. She was dressed in a flame-coloured chiffon that set off
her fiery beauty which was accentuated by the many diamonds, rather too
many for a young girl, but I think it is usually the tendency of those
who have no diamonds to wear to think that the ones who do have them
wear too many. Needless to say that I have no diamonds to wear.
"Isn't she the limit?" hissed Dum, as we stopped dancing near each other
and Zebedee and his partner kept on for a moment after the music had
stopped. "I call it lollapalussy to dance after the band quits."
"She is looking mighty handsome, don't you think?"
"Handsome! She looks oochy koochy to me! Too like the Midway to suit my
taste."
Well, we had certainly had a wonderful time and I was not going to let
anything ruin it for me. Stephen White could grow a moustache as big as
a hedge and come and settle all over the county if he wanted to, and Mr.
Jeffry Tucker could dance with a loud-mouthed girl in flame-coloured
chiffon until he scorched himself if he wanted to. I had been to a ball
and been something of a belle and now I was tired and sleepy and wanted
to get to bed and talk over things with the girls,--I did wish though
that I had not blushed like a fool rose just at the wrong time and that
Zebedee had not seen me.