“Was Stoughton very bad, as bad as those towns usually are to impatient young persons who wish to live before they die?”
“Worse than you can imagine—a nightmare. It seems to me that hereafter, whenever I feel low in my mind, I’ll say ‘Well, at least this is not Stoughton,’ and be cheerful again.”
They were at Clairmont, and as Emily saw the inn and its broad porches and the tables where women and men in parties and in couples were enjoying themselves, as she drank in the lively, happy scene of the summer and the city and the open air, she felt like one who is taking his first outing after an illness that thrust him down to death’s door. They went round the porch and out into the gravelled open, to a table that had been reserved for them under the big tree at the edge of the bluff.
There was enough light from the electric lamps of the inn and pavilions to make the table clearly visible, but not enough to blot out the river and the Palisades. It was not an especially good dinner and was slowly served, so Frank complained. But Emily found everything perfect, and astonished Theresa and delighted the men with her flow of high spirits. Theresa drank more, and Emily less, than her share of the champagne. As Emily had nothing in her mind which the frankness of wine could unpleasantly reveal, the contrast between her and Theresa became strongly, perhaps unjustly, marked with the progress of the “party,” as Theresa called it; for Theresa, who affected and fairly well carried off a man-to-man frankness of speech, began to make remarks at which Demorest laughed loudly, Marlowe politely, and which Emily pretended not to hear. Demorest drank far too much and presently showed it by outdoing Theresa. Marlowe saw that Emily was annoyed, and insisted that he could stay no longer. This forced the return home.
As they were entering the automobile, Demorest made a politely insolent observation to Theresa on “her prim friend from New England,” which Emily could not help overhearing. She flushed; Marlowe frowned contemptuously at Demorest’s back.
“Don’t think about him,” said he to Emily, when they were under way. “He’s too insignificant for such a triumph as spoiling your evening.”
Emily laughed gaily. “Oh, it is a compliment to be called prim by some men,” she said, “though I’d not like to be thought prim by those capable of judging.”
“Only low-minded or ignorant people are prim,” replied Marlowe.
“There’s one thing worse,” said Emily.
“And what is that?”