That same day two of their agreeable acquaintances of the previous evening escorted them to the State House, with its gilded dome and fine eighteenth-century decorations. They ascended a lofty tower, and gained a comprehensive view of the city, the winding river, and Charlestown, and beyond it the south coast and island-sprinkled sea. It was a clear, brilliant day, though intensely cold. The dark boats on the glittering river, the numerous vanes and pinnacles that rose above the snow-bound city and caught the sunlight, the forest of masts in the harbor and silhouettes of wide-armed elms upon the Common, the frozen lake on which hundreds were skating and sliding merrily, and over all a span of wind-swept sky, almost Florentine in its hard, blue depth, startled the English travellers with unexpected beauty.
"This is really charming!" cried Mrs. Frampton. And after such an admission there was nothing more to be said.
Then they visited several book-stores and the noble public library. At last, when the sky was growing the color of a tea-rose, against which church tower and steeple uprose in solid purple, they recrossed the park, and Grace and Mordaunt hastened to dress for the Country Club dinner.
At six o'clock a double sleigh drove to the door, with a great jingling of bells, and servants fur capped and coated; and inside the open shell-shaped carriage two figures—one, a bundle of Shetland veils and sable, out of which Mrs. Courtly's silvery voice arose, the other, an attenuated stroke of black, like a note of admiration, as he leaped out and stood upright in the snow. This proved to be John Reid.
The brother and sister were equally pleased to find their brisk American friend of the party, and Mrs. Courtly explained that he had called on her late in the afternoon, when she had been so fortunate as to find he could fill the seat left suddenly vacant. She added in a whisper to Grace, while the two men were talking,
"His mother always tries to prevent his calling on me, if he is in Boston when I happen to be here. She will be extremely angry at our carrying him off to-night."
The moon had not yet risen, and the drive to the Country Club in the dark would have seemed long but for the ball of talk tossed to and fro. Mrs. Courtly was in her brightest and youngest mood, ready to enjoy, and therefore to make others enjoy, everything. They drove at length through some gates into a small park, and, at the tail of several other sleighs, alighted at a long house, surrounded by a wide balcony or "piazza," into which all the rooms on the ground floor opened. None were very large, and in nearly all small round tables were laid for dinner, so as to accommodate parties of four and six separately. Some were already occupied; some were awaiting the descent of the ladies from their tiring-chamber.
Nearly every one had arrived, and the whole place was alive with light and bustle, greetings in merry, high-pitched voices; waiters, heavily laden, charging to and fro through the crowd; men with frozen moustaches thawing before the bright wood-fires; nymphs in procession down the stairs, emerging miraculously fresh from their hoods and mantles.
The dinner was excellent, and the spirit in which it was evident that every one sat down to it was that proper to all entertainment, but which so often with the English is conspicuous by its absence. They came, young and old, with the resolute intention of amusing themselves. If they had not "felt like" amusing themselves, they would have stayed away. Look round the room, and you could see nowhere that air of resignation—that air which says, "Though I should drop with fatigue and ennui, I will go through with it, never fear!"—which is so piteous on the faces, nay, on the very backs—of so many British chaperons. It is true there were but few of these. Two and three girls could come with one matron, leaving their respective mothers at home. If the mothers came, it was because they liked it; in some instances, because they meant to dance themselves. This gayety of temperament and power of enjoyment was, of course, yet more remarkable when, after dinner—and a little interval for digestion, coffee, and cigars—men and women reassembled in a pretty ball-room upstairs. The hilarity then seemed infectious. Mordaunt had not appeared so animated since he had parted from Clare Planter. He danced with all the prettiest girls, was pronounced to be "too nice for anything," and encountered, in consequence, some scowls from jealous swains. At first it was only the young who "took the floor." But soon elderly gentlemen and mature dowagers were to be seen advancing, and receding, and gyrating, in the complicated movements of the waltz and polka, as naturalized in America. Mrs. Courtly, after presenting half a dozen men to Grace, was carried off by a youth, renowned for his dancing, and who always declared that no one waltzed like her. This was followed by "Dancing in the Barn," which Mordaunt had been taught at Brackly, and which he and Mrs. Courtly now performed greatly to their own satisfaction and that of the few spectators who were not themselves prancing round the room. Among those few were Grace and John Reid.
"Wouldn't my mother be down on Mrs. Courtly, if she could see her?" he said, laughing.