“I’m a little patchwork quilt
All my edges trimmed in gilt!
No one here to cuddle with me—
I’m as cuddly as can be!”
There was loud, determined clapping, and Daisy ran off the floor, her face suffused with blushes.
“Perfectly grand, dear,” said one of the guests. “So much sweeter than the first time you gave it.”
“That won’t last,” said Beulah, looking at Daisy who had returned to the room and was holding someone’s hand, obviously searching the face of her friend for signs of approval. “It won’t last—I’ve been all through it.”
In the alcove, six musicians wearing short red skirts, white blouses, white silk stockings and red sandals, were holding their instruments in readiness. They were camping among themselves, though the one with the clarinet looked just a trifle uncomfortable. Drewena asked them to play a slow drag and they began “Mood Indigo,” the harpsichordist tapping her red sandal on the side of her chair, each musician looking oddly like his instrument. Drewena favored a tempered arrangement of popular music in the modern idiom. For a simplified expression of this type of instrumentation she had chosen the curious grouping of harpsichord, vibraphone, harp, bassoon, clarinet and drums. She felt that any brass, even muted, would destroy the exotic, passionate tenor of the music achieved by the combination of strings and reeds (the drums having been modulated by casings) and affected also by the arranger, who had found the predominant oriental theme from listening to Drewena herself at the piano.
Some of the dancers walked idly, in as slow a tempo as possible. Others, however, flew around the floor in a febrile reaction to the sometimes sweet, sometimes wild expression of the orchestra. Carrie’s popularity was noticeable. She flew from partner to partner. But her dancing was a little heavy, and her large, moist eyes followed Miriam.
Drewena held on to Miriam tightly, preferring to be led.