"What for? For making herself and others happy?"
"Why, yes, in a way," he replied, still chuckling. "You see, she is kinder severe, as we Yankees say, on Mrs. Courtly, who, she declares, tries to captivate every man she comes near. I tell her it wants no trying—we all take to Mrs. Courtly as ducks do to water. That makes my mother mad."
"I hope Boston is not very censorious?"
"Well, you see, I don't live in Boston," he replied, with becoming caution. "There are quite a number of sets here, and, as in other big cities, I suppose, they sit on each other—rather. My mother belongs to the earnest set. 'There are no flies on her.' (Have you heard the Salvation Army hymn? Well, I won't repeat it. It would shock you.) She is a real good woman, and spends all her time rummaging about at committees, and schools, and hospitals. The trouble is, she expects every one to have the same tastes, and can't tolerate what she calls 'frivolity.'"
"Then she will not tolerate me. I do nothing useful. Do you come often to Boston?"
"Once or twice a year, for a few days. In the summer my mother meets me at Newport, or we cross the ocean together. I allow I like that better than coming here, where my mother's friends are—well, not quite my style."
Then a man came up and claimed Grace's hand for "the german," and she had no further opportunity of hearing Mr. Reid's views. The dance was over at eleven o'clock; and now began once more a rapid eclipse of all the meteors, in their shining array, under soft but solid clouds of fur; and outside there was a jingling of bells, a champing of bits, and stamping of hoofs on the frozen snow, and the white moonlight streamed down over all, glistening like silver on the icicles that depended from the balcony, and articulating every object in blue-black shadow on the snow.
The drive back was like a fairy dream, with this advantage, it was exhilarating; while dreams often enervate, leaving their recipient, on waking, less well able to cope with hard, prosaic fact. They flew along in procession, with their clanging bells, over the burnished snow, every leafless twig told out in tracery of shadow on the roadway, every "sentinel pine," equipped in white fur, standing erect and motionless against the still, blue night. The moon was at its full, and smote the foreheads of the little painted wooden houses with its blinding light, and flooded the distant country, lifting blue hills, on the horizon, into that prominence which vagueness lends to outlines, from which the eye in sunlight is distracted by a thousand small intervening details.
"It was perfect enchantment!" said Grace to her aunt the next morning at breakfast.
"Yes, it was awfully jolly," said her brother. "And then Reid is such a good sort. We were lucky to have him with us. Some of these young chaps, I find, are very jealous of one. Such rot, you know. I overheard one of them say to a girl whom I had asked to dance, 'Of course we have none of us any chance now. You'll want to dance with the Englishman all the time!' I should like to have kicked him."