Kate's thoughts, too, were busy with her young adventurers into the world, throughout a wakeful night; only her anxieties did not concern themselves with Jacqueline. A nature so trusting, so unconscious, so bubbling over with friendliness toward all mankind, could not fail to make friends for itself among strangers, among even enemies. She had smiled to notice Jacqueline's success with the young men Thorpe had brought to supper. Her own girlhood had been a succession of just such triumphs. But belle as she was, many a ballroom had been spoiled for her by the sight of girls to whom it was not a scene of triumph, to whom it was no less than a battlefield, where the vanquished face defeat with the fixed and piteous smile of the hopeless wallflower.
Her heart yearned over her eldest daughter. Poor, clever, pretty Jemima, who knew so well what she wanted of life, and wanted it so determinedly! A world of which carefree gaiety is the essential element might be very cruel to Jemima. If Kate could have plucked out her own charm by the roots and given it to her child for a weapon, she would have done it thankfully.
She fell asleep at last over one of the prayers that had been unconsciously upon her lips that day: "Make people nice to them, God! You must see that my girls have partners, both of them, since I am not there to attend to it myself."
Kate's relations with her Creator, while informal, were remarkably confident, for a woman who believed herself non-religious....
It was a worn and leaden-eyed professor who returned the adventurers to Storm late the next day.
"Take me to a bed," he demanded wearily. "No, I shall not have supper, nor a julep, nor anything but a bed. I'd like to sleep without stirring for a week!"
Jacqueline embraced him with the arm that was not at the moment embracing her mother. "Poor old Goddy! Was it done to a frazzle, turkey-trotting with all the chaperons? You ought to have seen 'em, Mummy! Ladies as old as you are, yes, and older! hopping about like Dervishes. I'm glad you don't do such things.—But it was glorious! Crowds of beaux, and I tore all the lace off my petticoat, and we made the band play 'Home, Sweet Home,' five times. You know that is what they play when the party is over."
"Still?" murmured Kate, smiling. She had a momentary recollection of times when she, too, had made the band repeat "Home, Sweet Home," she with Basil Kildare....
"As for Jemmy," went on the eager, excited voice. "You just ought to have seen her! My, my!"
"What about Jemmy?" asked the mother, quickly.