“HELLO SNACKENBERG! HERE AM I! GIVE ME A RIDE?”
Dorothy’s Travels.
Since Monty had said that he was hungry, of course, she would stay for that one meal and let him get comfortable. Afterward—she would follow her own judgment.
But she, also, was gently bred and born, and despite a lack of plain common sense was an agreeable person in the main. She had responded to Mrs. Hungerford’s greeting with a correct society manner; and now, as she followed toward the dining-room, she bestowed upon that lady’s back a keenly critical survey. She saw that Aunt Lucretia was well but simply gowned in white. She was immaculately fresh, and fragrant from her bath with a faint odor of violets about her that pleased rather than offended nostrils which habitually objected to “perfumery” as something common and vulgar.
Her gown might have been expensive but did not look so and was eminently more fit for an evening dinner in a tourists’ hotel than the elaborate costume of Mrs. Stark.
Though she had been but twenty-four hours in the place, Auntie Lu had already adapted herself to it completely, and smiled away the services of a rather frightened head-waitress new to her business, as she threaded her way toward that distant corner of the crowded room where her own table overlooked the water.
A little hush fell over the adjoining tables as Mrs. Stark’s elegance bore down upon them in her majestic way. She was portly and heavy-motioned, as poor Monty was apt to be when he should arrive at her age; and chairs had to be drawn in closer, feet tucked under them, and heads bent forward as she passed by.
As for the youth in her train misery and mortification shone on his chubby countenance. For a boy he had been absurdly fond of dress, but he had also a keen sense of what was fit and he knew his present costume was not that. However, all this trivial unpleasantness passed, as the entering pair were greeted by the rest of the party. The Judge still wore a business suit but his manner, as he rose to be presented to Mrs. Stark was so polished and correct that her spirits revived, thinking:
“Well, the people are all right, if the place isn’t.”
She acknowledged Miss Isobel’s greeting with a slight haughtiness, such as she felt was due a social inferior. Upon Molly she bestowed an admiring smile and glance; and upon Dorothy a rather perfunctory one. The girl might also be “poorhouse born” for aught anybody knew, and from contact with such her “precious lamb” was to be well protected. She intended to see to it that further intercourse between her son and that “tramp,” Jim Barlow, should be prevented also; and while she marvelled that “the Breckenridges” should make much of the girl, as apparently they did, it wasn’t necessary that she should do the same. Monty had told her all about each member of the party so that Dorothy’s story was familiar to her. The lad had concluded his recital with the words: