It was "New Year's night" at Miss Marr's, and every girl was as bright
and fresh as if the night before she had not watched the old year out
and the new year in; for the happiness of it all, and the long morning
rest had been like a tonic.
"_Didn't_ we have a good time last night!" exclaimed Myra Donaldson, in
a sort of general questioning tone, as she stood with a group of the
girls by the big hall-fire, just before the hour appointed for the
guests to assemble.
"A tip-top time, for that kind of a time," answered Dolly, speaking
first, in her usual forward fashion.
"What do you mean by 'that kind of a time'?" asked Myra.
"I mean a girl-party. It was the best girl-party I ever went to; but I
like parties best with boys in 'em, just as I like cake best with
currants or raisins in it."
The girls all laughed; and Kate Van der Berg called out: "The boys then
stand for the currants and raisins with you, Dorothea?"
"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 circumstances, 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 cocky."
"And this little chap _might_ be cocky, 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 coxswain in the Charlesgate boat-crew."
"I say now!" ejaculated 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-fashioned things; but this girl will fetch me through, I know."
And Peter was right. Dorothea fetched him through beautifully, and Peter
didn't in the least mind her rattling. Indeed, he seemed to encourage it
and to be amused by it; for Peter, I am afraid, was that kind of young
man that Kate Van der Berg declared that her brother was _not_,--the
young man who encourages rattling, to make fun of it. But whatever Peter
did was very lazily done, and his fun-making was confined mostly to his
own inward reflections, with now and then the dropping of a humorous
word to some favorite companion. To be sure, this humorous word of
Peter's had its full effect, for Peter was not a great talker, and as he
was known to be a keen-witted fellow, whatever he did say was made much
of. But Peter himself hadn't a bit of malice in him, and if he had his
laugh now and then at some foolish rattler, I, for one, think the
rattler deserved the laugh, and came off very easily at that; for, as
Jimmy Dering said once of his cousin,--
"Girls of Dolly's sort have got to learn that people are not going to be
careful of them and their feelings, unless _they_ are careful, to begin
with."
And I will add that girls of Dolly's sort teach all girls how _not_ to
do it,--how not to romp and rush and rattle, and make themselves objects
of ridicule, in the fond delusion that they are objects of admiration,
as Dolly did on this very night.
She began her rattle with Schuyler Van der Berg; she kept it up with
Peter Van Loon and fine handsome Victor Graham, and concluded it at the
end of the evening with Raymond Armitage, who was of a very different
fibre from the others,--a harder, coarser fibre altogether.
But Dolly found Raymond Armitage the most interesting of the four, for
it was Raymond who to her mind was the most polite, the most attractive
in his way of doing and saying things,--his way of listening admiringly
to everything she said, of laughing and applauding all her blunt
speeches and frisky ways. If Jimmy had not been so popular, and
consequently so necessarily engaged in responding to this popularity, he
would have noticed how Dolly was "carrying on," and have tried at least
to check her; but when Jimmy was not talking with a little knot of boys
and girls about boat-crews and foot-ball and the coming season's races,
he was dancing with Hope, and in every pause of the dance he talked
about music; and that entirely absorbed both of them. But there came at
last the grand concluding dance that brought them all more closely
together. It was that concluding dance that Kate Van der Berg had spoken
of as the best fun of all. This dance had been introduced and taught by
Miss Marr herself at the very start of her school, and was by this time
perfectly well known to all her girls, and readily understood by any new
guest of the evening under the guidance of his partner. It was an old
French dance,--a "gavotte," so called. Miss Marr had told them its
history. It was a kind of minuet that Marie Antoinette had introduced as
a pendant to the minuet proper, adding other steps, and renaming it. She
told them that another point in its history was, that the name was said
to be derived from the town of Gap, whose inhabitants were called
"Gavots" and "Gavottes," and that it was not unlikely that it was an old
country dance of that region, and that Marie Antoinette made use of it
in her re-arrangement, and also called it a _minuet de la cour_.
But wherever it had its origin, it was a charming dance, and Miss Marr
had been taught it thoroughly in her early youth when she visited her
French relations in France as a pretty French costume-party dance; and
she in her turn had introduced various pretty changes, the prettiest and
most novel being at the very end, where, swinging all around together,
they pair off at last in regular appointed order, and pass through an
archway of flowers, each pair receiving in this passing a beautiful
little basket, its woven cover of flowers concealing two New Year's
gifts,--one a pretty trinket, a ring or brooch or bracelet, sent by some
member of the pupil's family for the pupil herself; the other a comic
accompaniment in the way of a gay mirth-provoking toy, to be bestowed
upon the partner,--the guest of the pupil on this occasion,--these
latter being furnished by Miss Marr, and most choicely selected, some of
them coming from Paris and Vienna. The girls were quite as much
interested in these funny toys as in their own trinkets; and when all
had passed the archway, there was a gathering together of the whole
party, and a great frolic over the examination of the basket's contents;
Kate almost forgetting the glow and sparkle of her new amethyst ring in
the fun of the little gutta-percha man, who was made to wink and laugh
and shake his fist at Victor when it was presented to him by Kate. And
when Hope lifted her basket-cover and found beside the tiny Geneva watch
sent to her by her father, the merry little figure of a girl playing a
violin, while a woolly bear danced before her on a wooden stand, Jimmy,
who was Hope's partner, with gay mimicry began to imitate the bear, and
Kate cried out,--
"Wouldn't you, _wouldn't_ you though, _really_ like to dance to Hope's
playing?" and quick as a flash, Jimmy answered, with a gallant little
bow,--
"I'd like better to _listen_."
"You'd like to listen and to dance, too, if you could hear Hope play the
Gungl' waltzes; you couldn't keep your feet still," added Kate.
"Oh, if I _could_ hear you play, Miss Benham!" and Jimmy turned eagerly
to Hope. "There are _no_ waltzes I like so well as those. I'm coming in
to-morrow afternoon to bring my cousin some music that I've brought on
for her from her old teacher in Boston, and she is going to try it with
me in the music-room here at half-past three o'clock. Miss Marr has
kindly given us permission, and oh, would you, _could_ you, Miss Benham,
join us at four o'clock and play _one_ of the Gungl' waltzes, just one?
It would give me such pleasure."
"I--I don't know that Miss Marr would--"
"Oh, I am sure she would; I'll ask her.--Miss Marr," and Jimmy put out a
detaining hand, as Miss Marr at that moment was passing, and in three
minutes more his request was made and granted. Hope had her full
permission to join the two in the music-room the next afternoon and play
the Gungl' waltzes if she would like to do so.
"And you _will_ like, won't you?" pleaded Jimmy, in his _naive_ boyish
way.
Hope hesitated a second; then, with a little laugh, assented to his
pleading. All this had been a little aside, in the midst of the hum and
buzz of the frolic; and then, just then, it was, that suddenly, over the
ordinary clamor, Dorothea's voice rose in a noisy laugh above
everything, and her exclamation, "I told you I'd get even with you!" was
heard from end to end of the hall.
Jimmy started as he heard it.
"What _is_ Dolly carrying on like that for?" he thought.
Miss Marr, too, started forward, with the same thought. And there was
Dolly, still laughing loudly, and shaking a carnival figure of paper,
free of the last scrap of its contents of sugary snow, over the person
of Mr. Raymond Armitage, her gay threat of getting even with him the
culmination of some joke that had passed between them. Miss Marr, as she
started forward, had evidently an intention of putting a decided check
upon Miss Dorothea then and there; but a look at Jimmy's face, and his
half-uttered "Oh, if Dolly _would_ think what she's about!" seemed to
change Miss Marr's intention somewhat, as it tempered her feeling; for
as she caught sight of the boy's face, she said to herself,--
"Poor little fellow, I won't add to his discomfort by speaking now."
And so Dolly went on in her wild way unchecked except by Jimmy's,
"Don't, Dolly, don't! You 're making _such_ a noise, and everybody's
looking at you."
But Dolly only laughed at this. She was having a very jolly time. She
fancied it was a very successful time, and that she was really the belle
of the evening, because Raymond Armitage plied her with flattery, and
because a good many of the others watched her with what she supposed
were entirely admiring glances. Getting glimpses of herself, too, in a
large long mirror occasionally, she saw that she had never looked
better; and, in fact, she did look very handsome, with her clear, bright
complexion, her silky black hair and brilliant eyes, framed in golden
yellow, and "all those daffodils," as Peter Van Loon had said. Yes, she
was looking very handsome; they all recognized this,--all these young
fellows who looked at her, and laughed and chatted with her, and
criticised her as "a rattler."