“Why?” Hubert demanded, fiercely.
“Oh, Hube, you know you don’t like parties. You always want to go home early, and I’m out to enjoy myself and I don’t care who knows it.”
Sylvia suspected that Edith’s real reason for wishing Arthur to be the guest was his greater presentableness; she had often heard her praise Arthur’s appearance while deprecating his namby-pamby manner; however, for a party like this, of which Edith was proclaiming the extreme selectness, that might be considered an advantage. Mrs. Hartle was reputed to be a woman to whom the least vulgarity was disgusting.
“She’s highly particular, they tell me, not to say stand-offish. You know, doesn’t like to make herself cheap. Well, I don’t blame her. She’s thought a lot of round here. She had some trouble with her husband—her second husband that is—and everybody speaks very highly of the dignified way in which she made him sling his hook out of it.”
“I don’t think so much of her,” Hubert grunted. “I went into the saloon-bar once, and she said, ‘Here, my man, the public bar is the hother side.’ ‘Oh, his it?’ I said. ‘Well, I can’t round the corner for the crowd,’ I said, ‘listening to your old man singing “At Trinity Church I met my doom” on the pavement outside.’ She didn’t half color up, I can tell you. So he was singing, too, fit to give any one the earache to listen to him. I don’t want to go to her supper-party.”
“Well, if you’re not going, you needn’t be so nasty about it, Hube. I’d take you if I could.”
“I wouldn’t come,” Hubert declared. “Not if Mrs. Hartle was to go down on her knees and ask me to come. So shut your mouth.”
The chief event of the party for Sylvia was her meeting with Danny Lewis, who paid her a good deal of attention at supper and danced with her all the time afterward. Sylvia was grateful to him for his patience with her bad dancing at first, and she learned so quickly under his direction that when it was time to go she really danced rather well. Sylvia’s new friend saw them back to Colonial Terrace and invited himself to tea the following afternoon. Edith, who could never bear the suggestion of impoliteness, assured him that he would be most welcome, though she confided in Sylvia, as they went up to bed, that she could not feel quite sure about him. Sylvia insisted he was everything he should be, and praised his manners so highly that Edith humbly promised to believe in his perfection. Arthur went up-stairs and slammed his door without saying good night.
The next morning, a morning of east wind, Arthur attacked Sylvia on the subject of her behavior the night before.
“Look here,” he opened, very grandly, “if you prefer to spend the evenings waltzing with dirty little Jews, I won’t stand it.”