Despite her annoyance, Joan had to laugh at that. After all it was too absurd, this protégé of hers, this discovery out of the slums, standing sponsor for the Darcy family with the Carmichaels!...
It did not occur to her to invite him to call. She had not as yet plumbed the depths of his social ignorance. He stood down-cast throughout the leave-takings, the remarks of "See you to-morrow," and "One o'clock lunch, did you say?" realizing that this wonderful evening was over, and not daring to hope that such luck would come his way a third time. He looked rather like a big, humble puppy that is about to be shut out of the house at night.
It was Effie May who noticed the resemblance. "Be sure you pay your two party-calls promptly, Mr. Blair," was her parting suggestion. "And if you happen to be at the Horse Show any other night this week, drop in at our box, you know."
"Yes 'm! yes 'm, I certainly will," he replied to both these hints—stiffly, because it was the only way he could manage to speak to this lady. But his ears were quite pink with pleasure.
CHAPTER XXI
On Joan's return from Longmeadow she had found her family already beginning to prepare for what was by far the most ambitious effort undertaken by Effie May as yet: her formal début into society. Joan, rather alarmed, protested. She wished nothing so much at the moment as to be allowed to slip into some inconspicuous corner and recover her lost confidence. She was in no mood for a continuation of an empty social career, particularly under the ægis of her father's wife. Other plans were beginning to formulate vaguely in her head, and she wanted leisure to perfect them.
But here for the first time she came into direct contact with the amiable, easy-going, unescapable persistence she had before suspected in her step-mother, and which made her feel as helpless as a caged rabbit; a much indulged and petted rabbit, to be sure, in which it was sheer ingratitude not to love its cage. Effie May used neither argument nor explanation. She simply went her chosen way, and the rest of the household perforce accompanied her.
Joan, herself not unaccustomed to pursuing her own path, did not submit without a struggle. The difficulty was to bring the matter out into the open. Effie May had a habit of taking things for granted that made discussion gratuitous.
"Father," Joan said determinedly one night at dinner, when the two elders were discussing the details of the impending ball, "why do we give a ball, anyway? It's not as if we were under many obligations to people—rather the contrary. And what's the point of entertaining for me in this wholesale way, when I do not wish to be a débutante?"