“ALWAYS IN THE WAY”
Another serious trial to The Boy was dancing-school. In the first place, he could not turn round without becoming dizzy; in the second place, he could not learn the steps to turn round with; and in the third place, when he did dance he had to dance with a girl! There was not a boy in all Charraud’s, or in all Dodworth’s, who could escort a girl back to her seat, after the dance was over, in better time, or make his “thank-you bow” with less delay. His only voluntary terpsichorean effort at a party was the march to supper; and the only steps he ever took with anything like success were during the promenade in the lancers. In “hands-all-round” he invariably started with the wrong hand; and if in the set there were girls big enough to wear long dresses, he never failed to tear such out at the gathers. If anybody fell down in the polka it was always The Boy; and if anybody bumped into anybody else, The Boy was always the bumper, unless his partner could hold him up and steer him straight.
Games, at parties, he enjoyed more than dancing, although he did not care very much for “Pillows and Keys,” until he became courageous enough to kneel before somebody except his maiden aunts. “Porter” was less embarrassing, because, when the door was shut, nobody but the little girl who called [p 26]
him but could tell whether he kissed her or not. All this happened a long time ago!
The only social function in which The Boy took any interest whatever was the making of New-Year’s calls. Not that he cared to make New-Year’s calls in themselves, but because he wanted to make more New-Year’s calls than were made by any other boy. His “list,” based upon last year’s list, was commenced about February 1; and it contained the names of every person whom The Boy knew, or thought he knew, whether that person knew The Boy or not, from Mrs. Penrice, who boarded opposite the Bowling Green, to the Leggats and the Faures, who lived near Washington Parade Ground, the extreme social limits of his city in those days. He usually began by making a formal call upon his own mother, who allowed him to taste the pickled oysters as early as ten in the morning; and he invariably wound up by calling upon Ann Hughes in the kitchen, where he met the soap-fat man, who was above his profession, and likewise the sexton of Ann Hughes’s church, who generally came with Billy, the barber on the corner of Franklin Street. There were certain calls The Boy always made with his father, during which he did not partake of pickled oysters; but he had pickled oysters everywhere else; and they never seemed to do him any serious harm.
READY FOR A NEW-YEAR’S CALL
[p 27]
The Boy, if possible, kept his new overcoat until New Year’s Day—and he never left it in the hall when he called! He always wore new green kid gloves—why green?—fastened at the wrists with a single hook and eye; and he never took off his kid gloves when he called, except on that particular New Year’s Day when his aunt Charlotte gave him the bloodstone seal-ring, which, at first, was too big for his little finger,—the only finger on which a seal-ring could be worn—and had to be made temporarily smaller with a piece of string.
When he received, the next New Year, new studs and a scarf-pin—all bloodstones, to match the ring—he exhibited no little ingenuity of toilet in displaying them both, because studs are hardly visible when one wears a scarf, unless the scarf is kept out of the perpendicular by stuffing one end of it into the sleeve of a jacket; which requires constant attention and a good deal of bodily contortion.
When The Boy met Johnny Robertson or Joe Stuart making calls, they never recognized each other, except when they were calling together, which did not often occur. It was an important rule in their social code to appear as strangers in-doors, although they would wait for each other outside, and compare lists. When they did present themselves collectively in any drawing-room, one boy—usually The Boy’s cousin Lew—was detailed to whisper “T. [p 28]
T.” when he considered that the proper limit of the call was reached. “T. T.” stood for “Time to Travel”; and at the signal all conversation was abruptly interrupted, and the party trooped out in single file. The idea was not original with the boys. It was borrowed from the hook-and-ladder company, which made all its calls in a body, and in two of Kipp and Brown’s stages, hired for the entire day. The boys always walked.