“How would it answer to speculate in a few, and to bring them out for the good of this benighted people?” asked Jack dreamily.
Meanwhile Mrs Leyton, who liked it all, was genuinely enthusiastic.
“What a room for a dance! You do dance here, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes! Sometimes Kitty and I dance together, or the Moronis come over, and then we are more,” said Bice simply. “If you would like it, by-and-by we can wheel in the piano, and I will play for you.” But seeing an irrepressible smile in Mrs Leyton’s face, she coloured and said hotly, “You think us foolish—you don’t do such things in England!”
It was Phillis who came to the rescue, eagerly and yet a little shyly.
“If we don’t, it is not that you are foolish, only wiser than we are, and lighter-hearted. It takes a great deal to make us dance in England—”
“Lights and music and a month’s preparation, and then enough people to prevent the risk of anyone being seen,” added Jack. “Your plan is much the most sensible, Miss Masters. But you see we have all been brought up to think it a serious matter, and so for the moment you shocked our prejudices.”
But Bice was vexed. It always vexed her that anything, however slight, should mark her as un-English in her ways. She walked gravely through the other rooms holding her head with a little haughtiness. It passed, however, directly they had joined her mother and Oliver Trent in the smaller room—she was watching Ibbetson and Phillis.
Phillis, as often seemed the case, happened to be a little apart from the others. She sat quietly, saying little herself, but evidently interested in what was going on. Twice Bice saw her, apparently unperceived by the others, do a trifling kindness; once in disentangling Miss Preston’s veil which was in danger of being torn, and once in placing outside the window a stray butterfly which was blundering up and down against the glass. But she seemed to have a little difficulty in joining the gay-spirited chat which flowed with unbroken ease from Mrs Leyton, and if Jack addressed her, she showed a greater hesitation. Here was no secure and haughty rival to sting poor Bice by contempt; the girl, who would have had the worst side of her nature roused by such treatment, felt for Phillis a strange thrill of pitying sympathy. Yet pitying is hardly the right word. There was something about her which Bice envied, a kind of sweet dignity, of self-possession, in spite of shyness.
Captain Leyton very soon began to fidget over his opportunities.