A DANCE AND AN INVITATION.
"Well, ye see," Jean remarked, next evening, as the two girls, in the
delicious after-supper leisure of house-cleaning day, sat together in
the kitchen, "he didna even keek in on us, all day; an' he's said
naething to the Mistress, for she's the same as ever an' couldn't keep
it in if she was worried."
Daisy, her virile young self merely exhilarated, as it is with the
healthy young, after the long day of muscular labor, was barren of
speech but fruitful of glances out through the window, where the
sunlight of the long evening laid an elbow of shadow at the root of each
of the prim trees bordering Harrison's cement drive, and shone red upon
the open doorway of the garage. Harrison was spending the evening out
somewhere, and the big car was gone; but the electric brougham in which
Lady Harrison--who merely "put on style" by her husband's request, and
would really much rather have walked, or taken the trolley-car, on her
trips downtown--paid her social calls or went shopping, stood invitingly
in its place.
"Can the Missis run that thing?" said Daisy.
"Ey," said Jean, who had been regarding the younger girl's curves and
color a little wistfully, but none the less good-heartedly, "Ou, ay. She
disna like it, though. She's a plain woman--a richt leddy, though she
was na born to it, no more than him, ye ken."
"I wish she'd give that pretty car to me," said Daisy.
"Ay," Jean smiled reflectively, "nae doubt, nae doubt. If wishes were
electric buggies, there's nane of us would tramp. She'd be daft enough
to give it to ye, too, I doubt, if it wasna for her man. Ey, ey--whiles
I wish I had him, just for a wee. I'd train him the way a mon should
walk, so I would. Still, there's got tae be a master, ye ken, in every
family. I wouldna like a man that was saft, all around. I'd want him tae
be canny in business, like Sir Thomas, ye see--but I'd want tae be
mistress at home.... But, by the bye, lassie, speakin' o' men n' cattle
o' yon kind," Jean smiled to herself as she said this, and wished some
man, for the good of his conceit, had happened along unexpectedly and
heard this comparison, slipping out, as it had, by happy inspiration,
"how wad ye like the evenin' out? The Mistress hersel' said that, as ye
were a young thing and would likely be wantin' a good time, to give ye
an evenin' to yerself whenever I could spare ye."
Daisy needed no second intimation. She bounced out of her chair, agile
and untired as though it were morning and she just up. Then she paused
a moment, and her face fell a little.
"My skirt is all right," she said, "but I have no clean waist."
Jean paused; knuckles reflectively akimbo.
"What's y'r size, lassie?" she said.
"Thirty-eight."
"Thirty-eight," Jean's eyes opened; "losh, ye're fu'-breastit for a
bairn. I doubt a waist o' mine wadna be much aboon yir fit. I'm wide
across; but ye're fair wide too, an' then ye come out in front forbye.
Gie your face a dicht off whilst I rummage my trunk."
A little less than half an hour later, Daisy,--her serge skirt brushed
by Jean's friendly hand to an appearance of almost newness, and wearing
a silk waist of Miss McTavish's that, with a few shrewd tucks here and
there, had been reduced to fit Daisy's round, plump torso--came
dancingly out between the stone gateposts at the end of the Harrison
drive. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. Every nerve tingled
with the zest of life.
As she reached the sidewalk, a battered auto was just about to turn in
the gateway through which she had come. At her appearance, however, the
driver came to a halt.
"Hello, stranger," he said, sociably, "where d'ye think you're going."
Daisy, who knew how to "use her eyes," assumed an expression which,
just fitted the occasion.
"Got a dollar you ain't usin'?" enquired the chauffeur, who was her
creditor of the jitney fare. He did not glance at her as he spoke, but
continued to look straight before him in his characteristic,
businesslike way--showing, as formerly, a humorous profile, an
eye-corner that twinkled, and hair so thick and curly that he was
obliged to keep his peaked driver's cap sideways to keep it on at all.
Daisy looked down, moving her toe with shyness, among the grass-roots at
the edge of the sidewalk. "I have ten cents," she said, "for--for
street-car fare."
"Carfare where to?" enquired the taxi-driver, promptly.
"Nowhere," said Daisy.
"They're a poor bunch there. Don't go. Stranger in town?"
"Oh, not too strange, you know," said Daisy, glancing at him out of the
corner of her eye.
"That's all right, then," the young man opened the fore-door of his car
and moved over a little on his seat. "Jump in. I'll whirl you out to
city park."
"Oh-h, no-o-o," Daisy made her mouth into a mischevious oval of protest,
"I couldn't do-oo that."
"Why couldn't you?" the driver's head jerked half-around, in a brief
study of her face. "Got to report to mother?"
"I couldn't afford it," said Daisy; "I'm in debt now, ain't I?"
"You're in debt," said the young man, "but your credit's good as long as
I got the gasoline. Hop in!"
The girl stepped forward; set her toe on the running-board; then drew it
off, and backed away.
"Try again," observed the driver, dryly; "one--two--three--go!"
"What's out at this city park?" said Daisy.
"Oh, pretty near everything. Dancing, ice-cream, trees, jollyers. Was
you never out to a park?"
"Never with a fellow I didn't know," Daisy replied, in merry
equivocation.
"Well, then, right here's where you make the break," the chauffeur
remarked; adding, sententiously, "it's harder to start anything, the
longer you wait."
"I won't be with you long," he pursued, after a moment, "if that's all
you're worryin' about. I'm supposed to be workin'. I'll take you out to
the dance-pavilion and make you acquainted with some of the fellows an'
girls. Then I'll have to come back downtown again, and get on my run.
I'll come out to the park again for you, about eleven o'clock, and
bring you home. How's that get you, youngster?"
"It sounds all right," said Daisy, "all except the coming-home part. Do
I have to come home with you?"
"You bet you do," said the chauffeur stoutly, "or else it's all off." He
reached out and drew the auto-door half shut; his mouth tilted up in a
dry way, his eye slanted humorously upon her.
"All right," Daisy countered, "it's all off, then, if that's how you
feel. I don't know as I'd have gone with you anyhow. I--I've got
carfare--ten cents carfare--if I should take a notion to go."
"How you goin' to find your way?"
"Where?"
"Park."
"How d'you know I'd go to the park?"
"I know blame well you'll go there," said the chauffeur, "now I've told
you about it. Kiddo, the hay sticks out o' your hair all over. What kind
o' farmers was your people?"
"The kind that minded their own business." Daisy, with a little swing of
her hips, turned away, chin and nose in the air; "Good-night, Mr. City
Bug. I'm much obliged for your offer; but if I want to go to the park,
I'll pick up some _nice_ fellow uptown and get him to take me. Some
_nice_ fellow!"
"Here!" the chauffeur jerked out, rattling the door, "jump into this
car, you--you--"
Daisy went on a few steps; then, just as her intended pilot was about
to bang the door shut and start his engine, she turned.
"Can I come home with who I like, then, if I go?" she queried, dimpling
all over as she wrestled with her merriment.
"Yes, blame you!" said the taxicab driver, "you can come home with the
Devil, if you like. Come on--get in! Don't keep me here all night,
waiting for a dead-head passenger to burn up four mile o' juice on."
Daisy stepped in and sat down, warm and flushed and round, right beside
him. Then she had a good laugh, and thereby relieved herself.
"Take them bughouse streaks often?" her host enquired; his dry-pursed
mouth, his careless hat, and his eyes that looked regardlessly ahead
through the windshield, giving him, to Daisy, a kind of big-brother
aspect--the look of a man to be trusted.
"This was easy," he said, presently, as the car rushed away
down-street--the speedometer indicating that the speed limit was only
being exceeded by ten miles an hour; "dead easy. Ain't you scared, kid?
S'posin' I was a murderer or something, after all!"
"I'm not scared." Daisy slid a soft glance up at him.
"All right," said her companion, "for that, we go to the park, like I
said--this time. I had a half a mind to ride you to the bridge and dump
you into the river. I'm a revengeful son of gun when I'm crossed."
It was now about eight o'clock. The streets were filling with the
promenaders of evening, each in his or her best "bib and tucker,"
enjoying the worker's well earned off-hour of spooning or strolling.
Motorcycles darted in and out among the sedater and larger vehicles,
exploding like machine-guns; in the seat of each a happy youth with
either smile or cigarette or both, and often behind him, on a kind of
pillion, a girl, with the happily-needful arm placed about him for
purposes of support. Sometimes the girl was in a side-car, but then she
was generally the motorcyclist's wife. Automobiles glided ahead or
beside, down the smooth broad asphalt, like boats on a canal. As the
street ribboned away behind Daisy and her driver, there showed gradually
more green spaces on the streets. Before long, the houses grew few and
drew away, as it were, from the roadside. Green woods scalloped the
skyline. The asphalt ended, and they were running on a smooth-graded
road, oiled to keep down the dust. There was an interval of quiet
bowling along through sunset woodland, with Nature's lawns
interspersing; then life, to Daisy's relief, began to bubble and
sparkle around them again. They had reached the gate of the park at the
same time as two crowded street-cars; and, obeying traffic rules, halted
to let the crowd of passengers--many-hued in their summer dresses as
though one were looking at them through a prism--dance and chatter and
giggle and stalk past, arm-linked or baby-toting or soberly single,
until the road was clear. Then the curly-haired young man spun his
steering-wheel, describing an easy and rapid turn; and they were sailing
down a road straight as a line, with a great white pavilion awaiting
them from the top of its smooth-lawned hill. On either side, down the
walking-paths, came an endless stream of pedestrians, noisy and gay in
their evening emancipation, with bare-legged youngsters breaking loose,
racing and chasing across the green as Daisy had seen the calves do in
spring.
Everybody was "out for a good time." The air was like a tonic; the park
like a panorama. Between the capes of shrubbery and across the lawns,
and about the thronged pavilion and along the governed paths, the
evening breeze floated like a lily-breath, slow and cool and sweet.
"Well, here we are," said the driver, parking his taxi at the end of a
long row of vehicles in front of the pavilion. "Sorry you come, now,
ain't you? Yes, you are--not! Hey, don't knock a hole in the hood of my
rig, just because you think you're done with me."
Daisy had popped out of her seat so quickly that she had bumped her head
against the auto-top. Her spirits were at such a pitch of ecstasy that,
in her haste to open the fore-door, she jammed the catch. She hauled and
wrenched vainly at it, while her companion sat and grinned.
"Kind of a combination lock, huh, kid?" he observed, his eyes wrinkling
and his shoulders shaking a little--his way of expressing merriment.
"Don't talk crazy," Daisy sat up, sucking a finger she had pinched in
the mechanism. "Get this thing open!"
"Aw, no," the chauffeur was enjoying himself hugely; "let's just set
here. We don't want to--hi, there!"
For Daisy had squirmed agilely out over the top of the door. In doing
this, she had accidentally pushed the catch the right way; so that, as
she jumped down from the running-board, the door came docilely open
under her hand.
"That ain't stylish," remarked the taxi-driver, climbing out. "In this
town, we open the door _before_ we get out--not after. Come on, then,
friend, and buy me a drink. You said you had a dime, didn't you?"
"Where is the dance?" said Daisy, looking about her delightedly as they
ascended the broad flight of steps leading into the pavilion.
"Nobody ever dances till after they have a nut sundae or something," was
the comment of her escort, "I'll race you upstairs, partner."
Daisy accepted the gage, and reached the stair-top one step ahead. The
two followed a crowd of people through an arched double-doorway, and sat
down at a little round table with metal underbody and two companionable,
iron-spindled chairs. About them, the whole world, it seemed, was eating
ice-cream or drinking colored compounds out of glasses through straws.
Through a door at the side of the ice-cream room, Daisy could see
couples, on a long perspective of shining floor, whirling by in the
conventional embrace of the dance. The thing got into her blood.
"Come on," she said, a moment or so later, as she hastily spooned up the
last of her "sundae," "I'll give you the first dance, Mr. Man, if you
take me out there."
"Now you got me," said the chauffeur, with a momentary sheepishness; "I
don't dance. I'm a ballplayer." The speaker's tone, as he made this
apology, would seem to indicate that the two were accomplishments
impossible to find in one and the same person.
In the dancing-room, the chauffeur had a nod for everybody and from
everybody. The girls, especially, tilted heads on one side, or glanced
up at him through the coquettish corner of the eye, or jumped up out of
seats and buttonholed him and danced up and down in front of him--just
according as they were sly, or coquettish, or impulsive. Some glanced in
an armed way at Daisy, who seemed to be drawing a good deal of attention
from the "boys" as she entered. Miss Nixon and her escort had arrived at
a moment when the musicians were taking an intermission; and, as the
benches along the side of the dancing-hall were filled, there was ample
opportunity for a few introductions.
"This," said the chauffeur, stopping and putting his arm around the
waist of a mighty man with sandy hair and a neck so red--naturally
red--that it was almost scarlet, "is Baby Jock. Jock, this is a friend
of mine from out among the homesteads. She is pretty near dead with
staying at home nights, and I want you to show her a good time. I got to
go back to my run.... Be back at closin'-time, kid, to see if you've
changed your mind about lettin' me take you home." With this, and a
careless parting salute, the taxi-driver slipped out, leaving Daisy with
her new friend, the red-necked Colossus.
"Well," said Baby Jock, curving his hand around his chin and looking
largely down at her, "the Scots aye drifts thegither, heh?... Don't
tell me ye're no Scot, now, after that, lassie."
Daisy gave her mouth a little twist in lieu of answering, being absorbed
in the scene before her.
"Yon Jamie," said her companion--nudging her lightly this time, to
attract her attention, "forgot to leave me the name, when he left the
lass."
"Eh?" said Daisy, a little distantly.
"The name, ye ken?" repeated Jock, "juist give me the nickname, if the
name itself's too long." He continued to look at her in an amused way,
waiting patiently. Presently Daisy turned, lifted her dancing eyes, and
beamed on the big Scot.
"Ay," said Baby Jock, drily, replying to the glance, "ye're ready to
talk at last, heh? 'Miss McKechnie', ye said the name was, didn't ye?"
"My name?" Daisy dimpled; "oh, my name's Daisy Nixon. Say what's the
name of that boy who brought me here?"
Baby Jock stared, open-mouthed. Then he doubled up and slapped his knee.
"Heh, but ye're an odd buddy," he said; "but ye're canny, no to give
ha'pence for the name if the mon himself's a'richt. Yon lad's name's
Jamie Knight. Here's thae fiddles skirlin' again. Come on and have a
dance, lassie."
As Daisy and her partner circled around the room for the second time,
she heard a girl with a humorous nasal voice, one of a couple just
behind, remark: "Say, that's like Jim Knight, ain't it. Brings a strange
girl in here, and ties up the second best dancer in the hall. Look at
the face on Leeby Cameron. Bet a quarter she has a word or two to say to
her Jock, on the way home to-night!"
"Ay, she means me," said Baby Jock, with mock egotism, looking down
twinklingly at Daisy. "Does that no make ye proud-like, to know the
company ye're in. But just haud yersel', and I'll mak' ye prouder yet.
D'ye see yon straight-backit fellow, with the stiff hair, third couple
to the right from us?"
"Who's he?"
"Ye'll no be long in this town till ye ken who he is. Yon's Nick Cluett,
the middleweight champion o' the boxin' ring. I dinna ken just where I
stand in the dancin'--ye canna althegither go by what ye just heard oor
neighbor, behind here, say--but there's nae doubt where Nick stands.
He's the best on the floor, by long odds. I'll see that ye have the next
dance with him. Nick, he never promises a dance ahead, so he'll no be
down on anybody's programme for the next turn on the floor."
"Who's Leeby Cameron?" said Daisy.
"She's juist hersel'," responded Baby Jock, evasively, as the
dance-music ended. "Hut, Nick, lad!"
A young man with heavy dark eyebrows and his hair combed straight up
from a forehead with transverse wrinkles, as it were, ironed into it,
came lightly across the floor, one hand in his pocket. As he drew near,
Daisy saw that his hips and shoulders moved with a strong rigidity, as
though all in one piece, and that his back was straight as a line. He
had recently shaved, but not very closely; and all over his chin and
cheeks black pepper-dots of stiff bristles pricked forth in a kind of
index of the lad's superb virility. He had a kind of fixed smile,
deprecating, almost apologetic. He carried his head canted slightly
forward and down; and, instead of tilting it back when he looked up,
merely raised his eyebrows. This habit was what had engraven the
transverse wrinkles across his forehead.
"Well, Babe," he said to Jock, casting a quick but careless glance at
Daisy, "what d'ye know!"
"I hae a lass here," said Daisy's escort, "wha's lookin' for a dancin'
partner. Miss Nixon, I'll leave ye with Mr. Cluett while I go 'tend to
my family affairs yonder," Jock humorously indicated the chair upon
which Miss Leeby Cameron sat glowering; and, with a genial parting grin
to Daisy, moved off toward his lady-love.
A man cannot excel in everything, and Nick Cluett, champion pugilist,
was no talker. In fact, he looked for a moment as though he were about
to walk away and leave Daisy standing in the middle of the floor.
"He says you're a fine dancer," primed Daisy.
Nick Cluett's eyebrows travelled up, and his dark face sloped at an
angle, in its perpetually-smiling way, above hers.
"Want to try me?" he jetted.
"I don't mind if I do," said Daisy, demurely.
"Do anything once?--eh, kid?" commented Mr. Cluett, taking her upper arm
in a hand of steel fibre, propelling her toward a bench, and drawing her
down upon it in the manner of a man to whom girls had voluntarily given
the privilege of handling them freely; "come to think of it, now, you
can be a life-saver, if you like, see?"
"How?" Daisy glanced at him sidewise.
"Why", Nick Cluett crossed his knees, dropped his elbow across the
uppermost leg, and leaned his broad shoulders forward till his hard
bulging triceps muscle touched her arm, "Bob Masterman--he's the fellow
looks after my business--is getting up a little party after the boxin'
show to-morrow night, and bringing along his girl. How would you like to
come as _my_ partner? Eh, little sporto?"
"I don't know," said Daisy, guardedly. "Where's the party at?"
"Our rooms, likely," said Nick Cluett, coolly; "little supper--game o'
cards--any old thing to kill time. Bob!"
A plump man in a check suit detached himself from a group near by.
"Bob, Miss--what's this your name is, again?--Miss Nixon here's to have
first chance to round out our little party of four to-morrow night.
She'll let you know at the end of the dance if she can come."
"Sure she'll come," said Mr. Masterman, unctuously, as he held Daisy's
hand and breathed cigar-breath copiously into her face; "sure she'll
come." He pumped the hand up and down, and tilted his fat face to one
side.
"Beat it," said Mr. Cluett, tersely. Mr. Masterman promptly obeyed,
glancing back coquettishly over one plethoric shoulder as he rejoined
his group.
The music started again. Nick Cluett and Daisy stood up, linked, and
were off. Probably no greater sum total of sheer glowing virility was
ever contained in any couple of dancers than in the flushed ecstatic
girl and the dark puma-like man who danced, as he fought, with a
beautiful "footwork" that the eye could admire, but that the watcher
could not emulate. Daisy, who had always been a good dancer, was on her
mettle as she saw other couples stop to watch; and the two footed it in
a perfect accord that was a treat to see. Masterman, who never had to be
told verbally what any situation in which Cluett was concerned required,
slipped over and passed a bill and a billet to the orchestra leader at
the time when the music usually came to a pause; and the dance continued
without the usual intermission. Cluett, to whom dancing was as casual as
boxing practice, had his attention free to contemplate his partner as
she glided, warm and full of zest and delight, in the sinewy band of his
arm. What with his dancing reputation and his boxing fame, he had been
surfeited with attention from girls, until they had become a little flat
and flavorless to him; but there was something so new and natural in
Daisy's expression, and something so fresh and forthright in what he had
heard of her talk, that his relish awoke.
"You're some kid," he said, squeezing her arm as he led her to the seat
at the side of the room, when the dance was done; "hey, waiter!" An
attendant with a tray came over, lithely and quickly.
"Name your dope, Dimples," said Mr. Cluett.
"Anything," responded Daisy, answering with all her merry might to the
name bestowed, as she beamed up into the dark face with its hard lines
and continual smile, "anything that you think's good for me, Mr.
Cluett."
"Nut sundae--twice," her companion directed, briefly, with a sidewise
jerk of his head at the tray bearer, who bowed response as to a peer of
the realm.
"Well, Sweetness," Nick Cluett said, a moment later, as they applied
themselves to the refreshment, "how about it?"
"How about what?" Daisy's tone was ingenuous and her look demure.
"You know," said Mr. Cluett; "our little party?"
"I don't know," Daisy put her head on one side teasingly.
"That's what you said before," observed Mr. Cluett; "ain't you thought
it over yet?"
Daisy tilted her head over to the other side, displaying a round line of
cheek and one of the dimples to which Mr. Cluett had previously alluded.
"Maybe," she murmured.
"Well," said Mr. Cluett, "I ain't no hand at coaxin', so we'll let it go
at that. Bob'll see you, after the next two dances. I got to go now, for
a little work-out with the mitts, before bedtime. I'd like to have had
another dance." This was a long speech for the taciturn Nick Cluett; and
he breathed with relief as he got it "off his system".
"I'll go to your party, I guess," said Daisy, "so you can tell that Mr.
Masterman to never mind seeing me. I'm not strong enough to stand seeing
him any more than once in an evening."
Mr. Cluett's fixed smile momentarily deepened a little, as he rose to
take his leave. "I suppose, as things is, it's lucky you don't take very
strong to Bob, or you'd have let me go away still guessin'--eh, little
one? I'll tell him it's settled, then. But don't you go and throw me
down."
Jimmy Knight called with his jitney for Daisy, at about midnight. The
trip home was made in comparative silence; but, as the car stopped at
the Harrison gate, he said, "what are you goin' to do with yourself
t'mor'? Got a date, I s'pose.... Yes, of course you have--I see it in
your eye. Won't you tell Brother Jim where you're goin'?"
Daisy waited till she had dismounted and stepped just within the big
stone gateposts, before she answered. Then she looked down thoughtfully,
moving her toe in the gravel.
"I'm--oh, I'm just--just taking a dare," she said; then laughed outright
as she glanced up and met his mystified look. "Good-bye, Jimmy
Knight--and thanks for the 'lift'."