She watched the dancers with an earnestly following eye, preoccupied, he supposed, with the moral aspect of their embraces and gyrations.
“It looks easy enough,” she said, with suppressed excitement, immensely fascinated. “I should think anybody could do that. You hop on this foot, you slide, you hop on that foot, you slide. I believe I could do it. No, no, I mustn’t let myself be tempted. I don’t want to be a sight.” Her voice had wavered; it suddenly came out bold. “My land!” she exclaimed full-bloodedly, “there goes a woman who’s not a bit slimmer than me! Look here, let’s try. Not right before everybody. I see a side room where it’s nice and dark. Come on in there.” As, hardly muffling a gleam of peculiar and novel amusement, he escorted her toward the room indicated, she reassured him, “I’m big, but I’m light on my feet.”
Charlie was afterward fond of telling that he had taught Mrs. Hawthorne to dance. But the single lesson he gave her did not of a truth take her beyond the point where, holding hands with him, like children, and counting one-two-three, she tried hopping on this foot, then on the other. For Mrs. Foss, who seemed to have specially at heart that the new people should enjoy themselves, in her idea of securing this end, brought one person after the other to be introduced.
How carefully selected these were, or how diplomatically prepared, the good hostess alone could know.
“Oh, I’m having such a good time!” Mrs. Hawthorne 49sighed from a full and happy heart, later in the evening, having gone to sit beside her hostess on the little corner sofa which that tired woman had selected for a moment’s rest. The dancing was passing before them. “It’s the loveliest party I ever was to. What delightful friends you have, Mrs. Foss, and what a lot of them! I’ve made ever so many friends, too, this evening. Mrs. Satterlee has told me about the Home she’s interested in, and Miss Seymour about the church-fair, and I’ve had a good talk with the minister. Those are three nice girls of the banker’s, aren’t they? Florence, Francesca, and Beatrice, commonly known as Flick, Fran, and Trix, they told me. Mr. Hunt, the nephew, is nice, too; we get on like sliding down-hill. They’re all going to come and see me.–Mrs. Foss,”–her attention had veered,–“do look at that little fellow playing the piano! Isn’t he great! But isn’t he comical, too! I’ve been noticing him all the evening. He fascinates me. I never heard such splendid playing. The bouncing parts make my feet twitch to dance, but the sighful, wind-in-the-willow parts make me want to just lean back and close my eyes. I could listen till the cows come home. I call it a wonderful gift.”
Mrs. Foss looked over at the little Italian, the unpretentious musical hack whom one sent for when there was to be dancing, and paid–it was all he asked–so very little. Her eyebrows went up a point as she smiled. It was true, she remarked it for the first time, that his hands flew over the keys with an air of breezy virtuosity. He raised them from the keyboard and brought them down again with the action of a snorting high-stepping horse. When the passage was loud he nearly lifted himself off the stool with pounding; when it was soft he tickled the ivories with the 50delicacy of raindrops, at the same time diminishing his person till he seemed the size of a fairy. Now and then he tossed his head, as if champing a bit, and the bunch of black frizz over his left temple trembled. A decidedly comic figure he appeared to Mrs. Foss.
“I will tell Signor Ceccherelli what you say,” she amiably promised. “I am sure it will please him.”
Leslie, whose responsibilities kept her from dancing her young fill at her own parties, sought Mrs. Hawthorne still later in the evening, when she thought that lady might have had enough of Mr. Hunt senior sitting beside her. The heavy old banker was not considered very entertaining, and everybody in Florence knew his way of sticking at the side of a good-looking woman. Lest this one, so evidently making herself pleasant, should be unduly taxed, Leslie stepped in to free her, tactfully interested the banker in a game of cards going on upstairs, and took the place he vacated–took it for just a minute, as a bird perches.
“No, you don’t!” Mrs. Hawthorne laid a hand on her arm when she seemed near dashing off to bring somebody else to present. “You’ve done the social act till you ought to be tired, if you aren’t. Sit here by me a moment and take it easy. This party doesn’t need any nursing. It’s the loveliest party I ever was to.”
Leslie looked off in front of her to verify the statement, and unreluctantly settled down on the little sofa to rest awhile. She liked Mrs. Hawthorne. One could not help liking her, as she had had occasion to assert and reassert in defense against a vague body of reasons for not adopting the new-comer into the sacred circle of friends, or launching her on the waters of their little world. Now, as they chatted, she said to herself again that if Mrs. Hawthorne’s 51homeliness of phrase were not a simple thing of playfulness, a disclaimer of the affectation of elegance in talk as stilted, bumptious, unsuited to a proper modesty, it could very well pass for that. Mrs. Hawthorne seldom expressed herself quite seriously. As she seldom looked serious either, one could hardly hear her say it was the loveliest party she ever was to without suspecting her of a humorous intention. By the sly gleam of her eye one should know she was doing it to amuse you, imitating a child, a country-woman, a shop-girl, for the sake of promoting an easy pleasantness. With her bearing of entire dignity, her honest handsomeness, her air of secure and generous wealth, she was truly not one whom the ordinary public would feel disposed to seek reasons for excluding. Leslie and her mother had refrained from presenting to her particular persons in the company. All remarks heard from those who had been presented led to an almost certainty that the new Americans were a success.