The Heart of Arethusa

by Frances Barton Fox

Then Arethusa paused, and flushed prettily with embarrassment. One did not confide such intimate personalities to strange gentlemen at Parties, she was quite sure, from that close study of the little book. She must be more careful of her tongue.

But Mr. Harrison cared not a bit what she said, or whether she ever said anything at all. She was a joy for him to behold if she never opened her mouth. He escorted her, with the pride of a personal possession, to Mrs. Chestnut and introduced her. Mrs. Chestnut held her hand kindly for a moment and spoke of Elinor, and expressed a Hope that Arethusa would have a Good Time; then passed her on to Emily, who was almost hidden behind a mass of roses she carried, and so excited at the Whole Affair, she could pay no real attention to Arethusa; but she managed to transfer her to her older sister just next; and the older sister to a cousin or so next to her, and a bosom friend or two thrown in for good measure.

It was a long receiving line and Arethusa was so utterly bewildered long before she had ever reached the end of it, by this way she was shoved, so to speak, from person to person, without ever really finding out who half of them were, for it would seem as if there had been a conspiracy to mumble the names spoken to Arethusa, that she could almost have fled the Party. "The Advice to Young Ladies" had said nothing of such a proceeding as being part of the Routine of Parties, nor had Elinor made any mention of it. Arethusa was totally unprepared. And it was, as an experience, well calculated to dampen even the exuberance of spirits with which Arethusa had fared forth to this new adventure. Everyone about her seemed to know everyone else intimately; she had no part in the gay greetings of old friends. It made her feel herself, as she watched, the only stranger at the Dinner Dance.

So she clung to Mr. Harrison for an old acquaintance, as to a rock in a weary land of unfamiliar surroundings. But such clinging was really unnecessary; for he wanted not to leave her side. Arethusa's little confusion only made her prettier.

"Am I going to sit by you at the dinner-table?" she asked him, when she had summoned sufficient courage to add this bit to the general uproar of pleasant conversation. It would help matters mightily, if she was.

"I don't know," he began slowly, but then he added, very briskly indeed, "but I can go find out and change the cards around if you're not."

"Oh, don't leave me! Don't leave me!" Arethusa fairly shrieked this request, and she grabbed at his coat-tails as he started away. "Please don't go off and leave me!"

Consequently, he was forced to leave her when they finally sought the dining-room, and he was miles away on the other side of the huge apartment at another table. Arethusa found herself next to a perfectly strange youth, a rotund, almost moon-faced individual with eyes that danced good-humoredly behind glasses.

This person addressed himself strictly to business, weeding out from the silver by his plate with such a reassuring air of knowing that he did the right thing, a small article shaped like a tiny pitchfork, that Arethusa followed suit immediately.

But she had a very decided dislike of eating blindly ahead without knowing what it was she ate, and although the objects before her presented a rather familiar appearance, she wanted to be quite positive. Having somewhat recovered her spirits by this time, it was not so hard to ask her neighbor the question. He did not look at all formidable, and one talked to one's partner at dinners, so the "Advice" had said, and it had not specified any condition of previously knowing that partner.