"But you went to the ball," said the elder woman. "You were not idle there, I imagine. And a ball is good for a great deal. One ought to accomplish more there than in a garden. Besides, you went with John Gray, and he is never idle. Did—he—accomplish—nothing?""Indeed, he was not idle!" exclaimed Amy with a jubilant laugh. "Indeed he did accomplish something—more than he ever did in his life before!"
Mrs. Falconer made no rejoinder; she was too poignantly saying to herself:
"Ah! if it is too late, what will become of him? "
The bench was short. Instinctively they seated themselves as far apart as possible; and they turned their faces outward across the garden, not toward each other as they had been used when sitting thus.
The one was nineteen—the tulip: with springlike charm but perfectly hollow and ready to be filled by east wind or west wind, north wind or south wind, according as each blew last and hardest; the other thirty-six—the rose: in its midsummer splendour with fold upon fold of delicate symmetric structures, making a masterpiece.
"Aunt Jessica," Amy began to say drily, as though this were to be her last concession to a relationship now about to end, "I might as well tell you everything that has happened, just as I've been used to doing since I was a child—when I've done anything wrong." She gave a faithful story of the carrying off of her party dress, which of course had been missed and accounted for, the losing of it and the breaking of her engagement with John; the return of it and her going to the ball with Joseph. This brought her mind to the scenes of the night, and she abandoned herself momentarily to the delight of reviving them.
"Ah! if you had been there, Aunt Jessica! If they had seen you in a ball dress as I've seen you without one: those shoulders! those arms! that skin! You would have been a swan among the rough-necked, red-necked turkeys," and Amy glanced a little enviously at a neck that rose out of the plain dress as though turned by a sculptor.
The sincere little compliment beat on Mrs. Falconer's ear like a wave upon a stone.
"But if you did not go with John Gray, you danced with him, you talked with him?"
"No," replied Amy, quickly growing grave, "I didn't dance with him. But we talked yes—not much; it was a little too serious for many words," and she sank into a mysterious silence, seeming even to forget herself in some new recess of happiness.