Now, here was a strange thing: the addition of this blithe companion seemed to dull the sport for those who most keenly loved it. In proportion as her eagerness for it increased, their own appeared to diminish. Dozens of times, probably, she was advised to “cut it out,” and with even greater frankness requested to “get on out o’ here!” Inquiries were directed to her, implying doubts of her sanity and even of her consciousness of her own acts. “Hay, listen!” several said to her. “Do you think you know what you’re doin’?”
Finally she was informed, once more by implication, that she was underweight—though here was a paradox, for her weight was visibly enough to have overthrown the informer, who was Laurence. But this was the second time she had done it, and his warmth of feeling was natural.
“Get off o’ me,” he said, and added the paradoxical appraisement of her figure. His words were definite, but to the point only as reprisal for her assault; Daisy Mears was properly a person, not a “thing”; neither was she “old,” being a month or so younger than Laurence; nor did his loose use of another adjective do credit to his descriptive accuracy. It was true that Daisy’s party manners had lacked suavity, true that her extreme vivacity had been uncalled-for, true that she was not beautiful; but she was no thinner than she was stout, and she must have wished to insist upon a recognition of this fact.
She was in the act of rising from a sitting posture upon Laurence when he used the inaccurate word; and he had struggled to his hands and knees, elevating her; but at once she sat again, with violence, flattening him. “Who’s skinny?” she inquired.
“You get up off o’ me!” he said fiercely.
She rose, laughing with all her shrillness, and Laurence would have risen too, but Miss Mears, shouting, “Hay, there, Mister!” easily pushed him down, for the polished floor was slippery and gave no footing. Laurence tried again, and again the merry damsel aided him to prostrate himself. This mortifying process was repeated and repeated until it attracted the attention of most of the guests, while bumping stopped and the bumpers gathered to look on; even to take an uproarious part in the contest. Some of them pushed Daisy; some of them pushed Laurence; and the latter, furious and scarlet, with his struggling back arched, and his head lowering among his guests’ shoes and slippers, uttered many remonstrances in a strangled voice.
Finally, owing to the resentful activity of the fat Eliot boy, who remembered his stummick and pushed Daisy with ungallant vigour, the dishevelled Laurence once more resumed the upright position of a man, but only to find himself closely surrounded by rosily flushed faces, all unpleasantly mirthful at his expense. The universe seemed to be made of protuberant, taunting eyes and noisy open mouths.
“Ya-a-a-ay, Laur-runce!” they vociferated.
A lock of his own hair affected the sight of one of his eyes; a single hair of his late opponent was in his mouth, where he considered a hair of anybody’s out of place, and this one peculiarly so, considering its source. Miss Mears herself, still piercing every tympanum with her shrillness, rolled upon the floor but did not protract her hilarity there. Instead she availed herself of him, and with unabated disrespect, came up him hand-over-hand as if he had been a rope.
Then, as he strove to evade her too-familiar grasp, there fell a sorry blow. Beyond the nearer spectators his unhampered eye caught the brazen zigzag gleam of orderly curls moving to the toss of a dainty head; and he heard the voice of Elsie, incurably sweet in tone, but oh, how destroying in the words! Elsie must have heard some grown person say them, and stored them for effective use.