“That? Oh, somebody’s spread, I suppose.” Beverly went on a step or two; but his companion didn’t follow him. Just then a lady with two girls bowed to him from a victoria waiting its turn across the street.
“Aren’t you coming in?” she called. Beverly went over to speak to them. The girls were exquisite creatures; he would have given his soul at that moment to be able to leave his burden on the sidewalk opposite and join them. But he was “catching a train,” he explained. When he turned away, with the feeling of one about to resume a millstone, Billy’s cousin was where he had left her. As he approached, she lifted a forefinger to her lips, raised her eyes mysteriously, and stood for some moments in what she probably fancied was the attitude of a listening faun.
“Music,” she whispered.
“I shall certainly strangle this woman before we reach Claverly,” thought Beverly.
“There is an orchestra inside,” he said.
“Oh, I could just die waltzing!” she exclaimed. She crossed the street, undulating ecstatically to the music that came gaily through the open doors and windows of the Pudding.
“I really must hurry,” said Beverly, very firmly.
“Just a moment,” she pleaded, resting her hand on his arm and swaying ponderously from side to side in time to the waltz.
“Could anything have been more odious?” Beverly said to the fellows afterwards, when trying to explain his presence in Cambridge on Class Day. “The Pudding steps—the whole street—swarming with people on their way to the spread; a line of carriages, a block long, full of girls I knew,—girls I knew; and I, standing there, a ridiculous little red fan in my hand—the thing popped out, and I couldn’t pull it back again—with a moon-faced tub of a woman I’d never seen before, rigged out in a crimson harness, hanging on to me as if she’d brought me into the world, and doing some sort of a can-can on the sidewalk, like a hypnotised old cobra.”
“Let’s go in,” pleaded Billy’s cousin, impulsively. Beverly drew away from her.