"What thing has happened?" Mr. Atwater demanded. "Is she——?"
His daughter interrupted him.
"Oh!" was all she said, and sped by him like a bit of blown thistledown, into the house. He grasped at her as she passed him; then suddenly he made other gestures, and, like Kitty Silver, used Jacobean phrases. But now there were no auditors, for Noble Dill and Newland Sanders, after thoughtlessly following a mutual and natural impulse to step over and examine the fallen basket, had both gone out to the street, where they lingered a while, then decided to go home.
... Later, that evening, Florence and Herbert remembered the c'lection; so they came for it, a mistake. Discovering the fragments upon the veranda, they made the much more important mistake of entering the house to demand an explanation, which they received immediately. It was delivered with so much vigour, indeed, that Florence was surprised and hurt. And yet, the most important of her dreamy wishes of the afternoon had been fulfilled: the c'lection had been useful to Noble Dill, for Mr. Atwater had smelled the smell of an Orduma cigarette and was just on the point of coming out to say some harsh things, when the c'lection interfered. And as Florence was really responsible for its having been in a position to interfere, so to say, she had actually in a manner protected her protégé and also shown some of that power of which she had boasted when she told him that sometimes she made members of her family "step around pretty lively."
Another of her wishes appeared to be on the way to fulfilment, too. She had hoped that something memorable might be done with the c'lection, and the interview with her grandfather, her Aunt Julia, and Kitty Silver seemed to leave this beyond doubt.
CHAPTER TEN
Now August came, that florid lazy month when mid-summer dawdles along in trailing greeneries, and the day is like some jocund pagan, all flushed and asleep, with dripping beard rosy in a wine bowl of fat vine leaves. Yet, in this languorous time there may befall a brisker night, cool and lively as an intrusive boy—a night made for dancing. On such a night a hasty thought might put it as desirable that all the world should be twenty-two years old and in love, like Noble Dill.
Upon the white bed in his room, as he dressed, lay the flat black silhouettes of his short evening coat and trousers, side by side, trim from new pressing; and whenever he looked at them Noble felt rich, tall, distinguished, and dramatic. It is a mistake, as most literary legends are mistakes, to assume that girls are the only people subject to before-the-party exhilaration. At such times a girl is often in the anxious yet determined mood of a runner before a foot race, or she may be merely hopeful; some are merry and some are grim, but arithmetical calculation of some sort, whether glorious or uneasy, is busy in their eyes as they pin and pat before their mirrors. To behold romance gone light-headed, turn to the humbler sort of man-creature under twenty-three. Alone in his room, he may enact for you scenes of flowery grace and most capricious gallantry, rehearsals as unconscious as the curtsies of field daisies in a breeze. He has neither doubt nor certainty of his charm; he has no arithmetic at all, and is often so free of calculation that he does not even pull down the shades at his windows.
Unfortunately for the neighbours, and even for passers-by, since Noble's room had a window visible from the street, his prophetic mother had closed his shutters before he began to dress. Thus she deprived honest folk of what surely must have been to them the innocent pleasure of seeing a very young man in light but complete underwear, lifting from his head a Panama hat, new that day, in a series of courteous salutations. At times, during this same stage of his toilet, they might have had even more entertainment:—before putting on his socks Noble "one-stepped" for several minutes, still retaining upon his head the new hat. This was a hat of double value to him; not only was it pleasant to behold in his mirror, but it was engaged in solidifying for the evening the arrangement of his hair.