"How de do, Hope?"
The "deep delight" on Hope's face vanished as if by magic as she heard this; and as she turned to the speaker, Jimmy said to himself:
"My! how she does dislike Dolly!"
When, in the next breath, Dolly repeated, "I thought Kate Van der Berg invited you to stay with her," Jimmy, who was a little gentleman with much tact and taste, groaned in spirit: "How could she; oh, how could Dolly put the thing in that way? As if—as if a girl had only to be invited by a Kate Van der Berg to accept! As if she couldn't refuse a Kate Van der Berg, or anybody—such a girl as this!"
But the next instant Jimmy's groan had become a chuckle as he heard this girl say: "Yes, Kate invited me to spend my vacation with her, but I had older friends than the Van der Bergs."
Not much in the words, but, oh, the way they were spoken,—the tone, the little straight stare at Dolly! Jimmy, little gentleman though he was, had a wild desire to throw up his cap and "hurrah" as he looked and listened. "It was all such a set-down for Dolly," as he told his mother later. But Dolly didn't seem to mind it much. She colored a bit, and then she laughed, and then before Hope could make a move away from her, she was introducing her to "my cousin, Jimmy Dering;" and Jimmy, tactful little fellow, began to speak in his soft, sweet voice that was like the G string of a violin, of the music they had been listening to; and he spoke so intelligently and appreciatively that Hope could not but be interested; and when, by the greatest good luck in the world for him, he asked her if she had noticed the beautiful expression on the face of the first violinist when he played, and then proceeded to tell her that this violinist was a German, and that his name was Kolb, and that he was a real genius, Hope turned such a radiant face towards the boy that he was quite taken aback at the first start; then he thought to himself, "She appreciates old Kolb as well as we do;" and delighted at this, was going on to say more, when Dolly's voice again broke in with,—
"Hope, I want to introduce you to my aunt, Mrs. Dering. This is Miss Hope Benham, auntie, one of the girls at my school."
"My school!" Jimmy groaned again when he heard this; and as he observed Hope's sudden stiffening and coolness, he inwardly exclaimed: "I shall never hear this girl play if Dolly goes on like this, with 'my school,' and that my-everything-way of hers!"
But when Mrs. Dering came up with that pretty manner, and said that she was always glad to meet one of Miss Marr's girls, Jimmy breathed easier; and when she asked Hope if she was fond of music, and Dolly burst out, "Fond? You wouldn't ask that question if you could hear Hope play the violin," Jimmy took courage and said,—
"Mother, if Miss Benham would only come to our Monday night musicale!"
"Yes, to be sure," cried Mrs. Dering, delighted at the suggestion. If Hope was a musical genius, she might perhaps be interested to help them, for the musicale was for a charity. That she was one of Miss Marr's girls spoke for her desirability in all other ways. It had got to be a sort of voucher to be one of Miss Marr's girls.
"And if you have your violin with you—she's got a wonderful violin, auntie—and will bring it, and play something for us—it's for a charity, you know—"
"Yes, if you would, it would be so kind of you; the charity is such a worthy one,—a little kindergarten bed at the children's hospital," took up Mrs. Dering, persuasively.
"I haven't my violin with me; and—"
"Oh, well, that needn't make any difference. I have two, and you can have one of mine," interrupted Dolly, with perfect confidence.
"And I have an engagement on Wednesday to another musicale, or rather a concert," said Hope, finishing the answer that Dolly had so confidently interrupted.
"But can't you come and see me some day and—if you'll tell me where you're staying I'll call on you—I'll call and fetch you any day you'll say, and Jimmy'll come, and we'll all play together—Jimmy plays very well."
Dolly, with this, pulled out a little tablet, and fixing her eyes on it in a business-like way, said, "Now, then, give me your address; and—"
"It would be of no use, I cannot come to you, for I return to New York Thursday morning."
"But it's only Saturday now—there's four days to Thursday—if you'd say Monday or Tuesday."
"I am engaged Monday and Tuesday,—you must excuse me—Ah!" with an air of relief, "there's Mr. Kolb, I must bid you good-by;" and with a very polite bow, including the three,—Mrs. Dering, her son, and Dolly,—and with a very small smile, Hope made her escape, and hastened towards Mr. Kolb.
"She knows old Kolb, after all," exclaimed Jimmy, in astonishment.
"She knows all the musical people that were ever born, I believe," snapped out Dolly; "stiff as she is, she's just crazy over musical folks. But did you ever see anybody so stiff and offish as she was?"
"I never saw anybody so persistent as you were, Dolly; you fairly pushed her into stiffness and offishness. You asked her to help in the musicale as if it would be simply a privilege for her, and then, when anybody could see with half an eye she didn't want to come and didn't mean to come, you went at her in the same way about coming to you, whipping out that tablet with a 'Now, then, give an account of yourself' air that was—that was—" But Jimmy could find no words to express adequately his feelings on this point, and finished up suddenly in his wrath and disappointment, "Dolly, you are the biggest bully I ever met. If you were a boy amongst boys, you'd get a licking!"
"Children, children, stop quarrelling, right here in public!" admonished Mrs. Dering, in a low, shocked tone.
"'Tisn't me that's quarrelling," said Dolly, regardless of grammar and in a tearful sniffle. "Jimmy's always setting me up to do things for him, and then he's al-al-always finding fault with the way I do 'em," Dolly went on, in a still more tearful sniffle.
"Setting you up to do things for him? What did he set you up to do now?" asked her aunt.
"To introduce him to Hope. He wanted to know her, he wanted to hear her play; and I"—sniff, sniff, sniff—"I—"
"Well, there, never mind; tell me when we get into the carriage," broke in Mrs. Dering, mindful of the proprieties, as she saw several persons observing Dolly.
"Yes, don't cry on the street,—you might get taken up for a nuisance, Dol; a policeman's got his eye on you now," growled Jimmy, with a savage little grin. Dolly had a queer, childish way of accepting everything seriously sometimes; and the startled seriousness of her face at this was too much for Jimmy's gravity, and he burst into a fit of laughter that cleared the atmosphere not a little, and made Dolly herself forget to sniffle. She forgot also to air her grievance against Jimmy, when, as they were seated in the carriage, her aunt said animatedly,—
"Benham—I wonder if this girl is the daughter of a Mr. and Mrs. Benham I met when I was in Paris."
"Her father and mother are in Paris now; that is the reason why Hope doesn't spend her vacations with them," said Dolly.
"This Mr. Benham was a distinguished scientific man of some sort, I believe. He was distinguished for something, I know, and he was with scientific men. I met him at Professor Hervey's, and he came into the room, I remember, with two or three English gentlemen of note. I recollect it, because I know I felt quite proud at the time that he was an American,—he looked so manly and earnest,—and some one told me he had just had a fortune come to him."
"Well, Hope's father must have a lot of money, for she's got a violin that cost enough. It's a regular Cremona."
"No!" exclaimed Jimmy, incredulously.
"Yes; she told me it was made by an Italian who was a pupil of Stradivari and lived in Cremona."
"You don't say so!" cried Jimmy, excitedly. "How I should like to see it, for I tell you to see a real old Cremona would be worth while. Lots of people think they've got a Cremona, when it's only an imitation. Karl Myerwitz, who makes violins, and knows all about them, told me that if everybody who claims to have a Cremona violin, really had one, the number of them would count up to twice as many as had ever been made."
"Well, all I know is that Hope told me that her violin was made in seventeen hundred and something by a pupil of Stradivari."
"Where did her father get it, do you know,—did she tell you that?"
"An old teacher of hers got it,—a German who has a brother who deals in rare violins in Paris."
"How soon did she begin to take lessons?"
"Oh, when she was quite a little girl."
"What kind of music—whose compositions, I mean, does she play?"
Dolly rattled off what she knew of Hope's repertoire.
"Well, she must have been at it from a small youngster," ejaculated Jimmy, emphatically, at the list Dolly gave. "And she must have a great—a great taste for music. The idea of your thinking I would play with any one who was up to what she is!"
"But you play very well,—you play better than I do."
"What's that to do with it? You don't mean to say that you think—that you propose—" But Jimmy stopped short, remembering the recent outbreak of sniffles and tears. But he had gone far enough for Dolly to understand, and she took up his words, not tearfully, but indignantly, as she replied,—
"I do mean to say that I propose to play a duet with Hope at school this very winter."
"Is it a school arrangement,—Miss Marr's plan? I didn't know that you studied the violin at Miss Marr's."
"Well, we do, if we wish to. There is a teacher, a very fine teacher, who comes in from the outside for that, as there is for the harp, or any other special accomplishment."
"Oh! and Miss Benham wants you to practise with her,—I suppose you can help each other,—I see," remarked Jimmy, demurely.
"I didn't say she wanted me to practise with her. I said that I proposed to play a duet with Hope sometime this winter."
Jimmy made no further remark concerning the matter, but he said to himself: "Yes, that's it; Dolly has had the nerve to propose to play a duet with that girl, and my opinion is that she'll get snubbed. Miss Hope Benham isn't going to stand Dolly's impudence,—not a bit of it."
"What concert is it, Jimmy, that comes off on Wednesday?" suddenly asked Mrs. Dering here.
"I don't know of any except that affair at the Somersets'."
"Oh, that for Mr. Kolb! I wish I had been told of that earlier. I only heard about it at the last minute, and then I couldn't get any ticket for love or money."
"Mamma tried to get tickets too," said Dolly, "but they seemed to be all snapped up at the very start by that Somerset clique. I think it was real mean. There are other people in Boston, besides the Somersets, that know about music, and can appreciate—"
"But there was a limit of tickets,—there had to be; for Mrs. Somerset's parlors, big as they are, can only hold just so many," put in Jimmy, in explanation.
"Your young friend may be going to this concert," suggested Mrs. Dering, reflectively.
Dolly bounced up like an India-rubber ball at this suggestion, and cried out,—
"Why, of course that's where she's going, I might have known it." And then Dolly leaned back discontentedly, and reflected upon the good fortune that seemed to attend Hope Benham at every step. There was Kate Van der Berg lavishing all sorts of attentions upon her; and here was this testimonial concert that the Somersets had got up for Mr. Kolb, and that everybody was pining to go to, open to her! "Wonder who she is visiting, anyway," Dolly pondered, in the course of these reflections,—"perhaps the Somersets themselves,—'twould be just like her luck."
And while Dolly pondered these things, Mrs. Dering mused with regret of what her musicale had lost, and Jimmy chuckled anew as he recalled "that girl's" high and mighty manner with Dolly. But his chuckle ended in a sigh, as he thought: "It's of no use for me to expect to hear that girl play; Dolly has spoilt all that."
CHAPTER XVI.
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."
CHAPTER XVII.
The next afternoon at half-past three o'clock Jimmy made his appearance punctually at Miss Marr's, and was received with great satisfaction by his cousin.
"It's such luck that you got Hope to come and play with us. I must say you know how to manage people, Jimmy," cried Dolly, gleefully, after she had greeted him.
"Play with us! She's coming to play for us, or for me, the Gungl' waltzes."
"Oh, well, she'll play that duet with me now, and you'll play our accompaniment."
"I shall do no such thing. I am going to play your accompaniment now. Miss Benham isn't coming in until four, and after she plays the waltzes I shall go away. As if I should take advantage of her kindness in such a manner! And how you can think of doing it, I can't understand, Dolly."
"Yes, now begin to find fault with me!"
"Find fault with you! I should think I might. You do such things, Dolly. Last night, now, everybody was looking at you."
"Why shouldn't they? A cat may look at a king, and I had an awfully pretty gown, Jimmy;" and Dolly began to hum the closing bars of the gavotte.
Jimmy saw how she understood, or misunderstood things, and burst out,—
"Look here, Dolly, don't you fancy now that those fellows were thinking of your good looks and nothing else all the time they watched you. I know fellows better than you do. I don't say they didn't like your looks, that they didn't admire you, but I do say they didn't admire the way you went on."
"'The way I went on'? What do you mean?"
"You know,—the way you giggled, and tossed your head, and 'made eyes,' as the French people say, at that Armitage fellow. I didn't happen to be near you to notice what you were doing until the last of the evening, but that was enough. I knew, by what I did see, how you'd been going on, for I've seen you at a party before, Dolly."
"Oh, I know what you mean; you mean that I flirt. I've heard that before, Jimmy. I can't help it if I have more attention than other girls, just because I'm lively, and know how to talk."
"Flirt! yes, that's what you call it,—that giggling, and tossing your head, and saying pert things. It's like a girl at a Park Beach picnic,—what you call 'flirting.' It is vulgar, and that's what all the fellows I know think of it; and while you think they are paying you admiring attentions, they're just having fun at your expense; and it makes me ashamed, for you are my cousin, and—"
"And you are the most conceited boy that ever lived. You think you know everything, and you don't know anything about society. A girl is always older than a boy in all society matters; everybody says so; and though you're sixteen, and I'm only fifteen, I'm a whole year ahead of you,—you're just a little boy to me. One of my sister's friends, a man who knows, said to me, this vacation, that I seemed to be eighteen rather than fifteen."
Jimmy stared at his cousin for a moment in sheer astonishment; then he exclaimed,—
"Dolly! what are you thinking of, not to see—"
"Oh, I know what you're going to say,—not to see that it is I who am conceited."
"And where did you get all that stuff in your head about society; and what idiot told you you seemed to be eighteen rather than fifteen?"
"It was no idiot," triumphantly; "it was Mr. George Atherton."
"George Atherton. Oh, then it is you who are the idiot not to see that Mr. Atherton was poking fun at you, or else he meant that you looked eighteen with your height and size altogether. But it is of no use talking to you, I see that."
"No, it isn't of the slightest use. We've wasted time now,—the time we ought to be trying this nocturne; and, if you please, Master Jimmy," and Dolly bowed, with a patronizing air, "we'll begin to play, or we sha'n't get through before Hope comes in."
Jimmy stared again. He was seeing Dolly in a new phase. Instead of flying into a passion, instead of turning upon him with tears and reproaches, she stood her ground with a semblance of cool superiority that astonished him. What did it mean? Was she getting so spoiled and puffed up by her vanity that the truths he had placed before her went for nothing against the flattery that she provoked? He knew that Dolly was not very finely sensitive, was what he called "dense;" but he had never thought that her good sense could be obscured by this density to the extent of making her positively impervious to criticism, as she seemed to be now. But such really was the fact. Not finely sensitive at the start, as I have endeavored to show, Dolly was full of self-confidence, and also full of animal spirits. With such a combination of qualities, it was not strange that she should be convinced that her own way was the only right way, and when led by her vanity through a little additional flattery, this conviction became so strong that no amount of criticism or opposition could move her. It would be only through some individual experience, some suffering in connection with this experience of having her own way, that Dolly would be likely to have her eyes opened to her own mistakes, and be able to see where she had blundered and what her blunders meant to others, as well as herself. Fresh, however, from what she thought her success of the night before, even Jimmy's words of protest, which usually moved her either to anger or tears, had no effect upon her. For the time she felt herself vastly superior to Jimmy in years and judgment, and from this standpoint she had met his criticism with a calmness that he could not at first understand. Of course this assumption of superiority was not a little irritating to Jimmy, modest though he was; and as he sat there playing the accompaniment to the nocturne, and pausing at almost every bar to correct Dolly's false notes, he was also pondering over her false notes in more important directions, and puzzling himself with suppositions as to her present attitude.
They were in the last passages of the piece, and Dolly was listening to his corrections in an absent-minded way that exasperated him, when the door opened, and there was Hope, with her violin, followed by Myra Donaldson, who was to play her accompaniment. Dolly did not wait to finish the bar she was scraping at, but jumped up at sight of Hope, with a "Oh, there you are, and you've got that dear little violin. Isn't it a beauty, Jimmy? See here!" and with one of her quick, confident movements, she took the instrument—one could almost say she snatched it—from Hope's hands, and held it out to her cousin, pointing to the shape and the beautiful red coloring with its dark veining, repeating, as she did so,—
"See! isn't it beautiful?"
She was turning it over, when Jimmy said, with a certain quick, sharp note in his voice,—
"I hope you'll excuse my cousin, Miss Benham; she has been so used to handling her own violin carelessly she forgets that other people may feel differently with regard to their instruments; and—"
"Jimmy is as cross as two sticks this morning, Hope; he's done nothing but lecture me ever since he came in," Dolly declared airily; but at the same moment she gave the violin back into its owner's hands, to the owner's great relief, who could not help glancing gratefully at Jimmy as she received it. This glance of gratitude did more to restore Jimmy's good-humor, that had been so sorely disturbed, than anything else could have done; "for," he said to himself, "she doesn't think I'm exactly like Dolly if I am her cousin, and, in spite of Dolly, I believe we should be first-rate friends if we saw more of each other."
He was still more convinced of this possible friendliness as he listened to Hope's playing,—as he saw how thorough an artist she was, how she loved and lived in her music, when the violin was in her hands. No silly little tricks about her, no showing off in her pose and expression like some girl-players he had seen,—like Dolly, for instance,—and yet how pretty she was, with that smooth, brown hair ruffling out around her forehead, and the color coming and going, and the brown eyes, too, coming and going, as it were, in their expression, as she played. As pretty as Dolly and not thinking about it,—not thinking about it a bit, as she stood there, an image of grace, her chin bent lovingly down to her violin, her skilful hands evoking such exquisite strains. And those waltzes! Were there any that were ever written fuller of perfect melody? So absorbed was Jimmy in all this listening and looking, he quite forgot that he had meant to run away directly after Hope had played. Dolly saw that he had forgotten; and while he was yet in the tide of his enthusiastic thanks for the Gungl' waltzes, she slipped the duet she had brought down with her on the music-rack, and said,—
