“You will like Manila very much,” said Isabel, drawing nearer to Julie as Mrs. Calixter turned to speak to some one else. “Perhaps you will find what you are seeking—they all seek, whatever they say. But there is always the joy of the day. You Americans are forever trying to steal to-morrow. See that you get your share of the hours and minutes—and come to my house again, as soon as you get your assignment. I know the islands, every spot they could send you to. Do this,” she urged, with an insistence that captured Julie. Her train swept her onward.
Julie suddenly saw their host come out and accost Isabel in the glowing spot under the central lamps. He bowed laughingly before her, and Isabel’s warm, enchanting face swept off in the dance, close to his. Julie paused thoughtfully.
A handsome girl in shining blue gauze stepped up to her, and was presented by Mrs. Calixter as Ellis Wilbur.
“Barry says that you have just arrived, and that I must tell you about everything. I think he meant everybody. It must all be so bewildering and strange, and so hard to catch up with. Leave her in my hands,”—Ellis turned to Mrs. Calixter—“you couldn’t for anything say the things I’m going to, and I don’t pretend that it won’t be fun.”
Reverting to Julie, with an air of light concern, she went on: “I hope you are not going to any of those dreadful little islands where they are sending such tragically unsuspecting teachers. Papa and I have visited some particularly atrocious ones—the Mohammedan group, away south, my dear, and so called because they live right up to the worst tenets of the Prophet. Moros are a nerve-shattering experience, they literally bristle with knives; and are always breaking out into massacres. It’s too big an emotion for me to seek the wilderness. But over here the game seems usually to over-shadow the risk.”
Miss Wilbur’s gaze, which had roved to the dancers became suddenly alert. “Ah,” she commented, “Isabel blooming like the ‘Song of Songs’! Have I a terrible little inkling of what that might mean?”
“For whom does Isabel bloom?” Julie demanded curiously.
But the quaintly disclosive Miss Wilbur became unaccountably reticent. She remarked carelessly: “Isabel cares transcendently for that Ancient of Days, herself.
“If Leah Chamberlain,” she went on in an unchanged tone, “would come in skirts up to her knees, she would create a much more unlabored effect than she is at present attempting with those classic black silken limbs of hers.”
For Julie’s enlightenment, she pointed out a woman with flaming hair and spectacular eyes, who seemed altogether too resplendent for the ordinary purposes of life.