When Emily went to her, there she stood, twinkling importantly.
"Got a secret to tell you, mother. Wilton said I might tell you. You're not to tell a soul, yet. Not dad!"
Emily's heart gave a protesting leap. She didn't manage to speak indifferently.
"Tell me what it is!" she commanded.
"He's engaged, mother. He came out to break the news to his dad. She's a nurse. That's good, isn't it? And he's crazy as a loon about her. He said I could tell you. He's been rushing that girl all summer, and his dad thinks he's working himself to death!" Martha smiled cynically.
What a relief! What a fine young man that Wilton was! Emily wished him every happiness she could think of. Martha didn't care a rap about him. Of course not! Trust Martha to choose exactly the right man! "Wasn't I just silly to worry about it?" Emily thought.
The pleasure of this assurance was added to the excitement of their preparations. Martha looked too sweet in that simple little flesh-colored frock. Emily kissed her impulsively. Eve looked lovely, too, but one didn't just kiss Eve on the impulse, even if she did take one's part stanchly against tender derision. Martha had been making her mother turn round and round to display her new gown. "If you know the trouble I had getting her to get it, Eve!" Martha had murmured. "It took me all the spring vacation to persuade her. I never saw a human being cling to old rags the way that woman does." And they surveyed her. She was as large, almost, as the two of them, of flowing line and generous bosom, gray-eyed, with soft brown hair. But her color, Martha said falsely, was ghastly. "You're tired out, mother. Now stand still. I bought this specially for you this afternoon. Mine don't suit you. Now don't be such a snob, mother. Stop rubbing it off! A little rouge isn't going to corrupt your morals. You'll come home as pure as you went! Mother! Oh, you're hopeless! When I try so hard to make you look presentable!" Wasn't that delicious, when one understood it? And wouldn't Bob have been annoyed to hear the child's impertinence? "Eve, look at her!" Martha begged, tragically. But Eve said: "Let her alone. You'd paint a lily, Martha. You'd marcel Thomas Hardy himself, if you got a chance. You look just sweet now, Mrs. Kenworthy!" And they turned their attention again to their own long-considered faces.
Martha certainly managed her adorning skillfully. No crude blotches of color for her. She knew what subtly became her. Her mother hadn't thought she used rouge until a few days before, when she came upon her in the act. "Why, Martha Kenworthy!" she had protested, "where did you get that stuff?" And Martha, turning to Eve, had imitated her very tone fondly. "Where did I get that stuff? Isn't she priceless, Eve? Isn't she a sort of an old treasure? I got it, to be precise, in a drug store in Madison Avenue. Not far from the station." And since then more than once she had turned her faintly tinted cheeks naughtily up for her mother's inspection. "Am I pure, mammie? Or am I painted?" she would ask. The doubt was scarcely as objectionable as the question. Pure wasn't a word girls ought to be throwing about just carelessly, it seemed to Emily. But both the girls failed to see her point. "What's the matter with 'pure,' mother? Do you like 'virgin' better?" They were just naughty, trying to shock her. And she would do better to keep her Victorian scruples, as they called them, to herself.
Or if she didn't want to keep them to herself, wrapped in paper and stored away on some upper shelf, let her discard them altogether. That was what the dancing, balloon-entangled mass of youth seemed to say to the Emily and Mrs. Benton who looked down upon it that evening from the platform. But Cora Benton, that lordly and distinguished daughter of the American Revolution, by her very presence retorted, as it were, "Yes! Lay aside Victorian scruples and New England tradition. Have I not Georgian scruples and Illinois decorum sufficient unto the day?" The city band, in brand-new maroon uniforms, was playing worse than ever, but they played—that was the point, for they had said they would never play if wireless music was to be chiefly used. The mayor and the councilors looked down on the dancers—those gentlemen who had refused to accept this hall as a gift—determined not to admit what their eyes saw, but unable to refrain. The Presbyterian minister and the Catholic priest, who planned to bless it by their presence but momentarily, still tarried, wondering. The representatives of the farm bureau and the granges were trying to estimate the number of people on the floor. All the reluctant admirers, all the gossipers, the obstructionists, the knockers, might stand on that platform, and look down over that rhythmic mass, right away to the farther side, where the dancers were swinging out on to the wide verandas to the starlight, and back again into the pink-shaded electric light—they might all gaze continually, eager to find some impropriety, anxious to see, as they had foretold, some daring lad come dripping in, in bathing suit from the adjacent swimming-place—but in it all, nothing, nothing could they find to shudder over.
For Mrs. Benton had reinforced herself, as it were, by the American Legion. He stood there with his hands in his pockets, bull-necked, yellow-haired, low-foreheaded, somebody's Dutch hired man. He had redeemed the Legion from the hands of the disreputable and he rallied about it the decent element of the community, re-established it financially—after its treasurers had absconded—made its dances popular again, and started to build it a permanent home. Mrs. Benton had wanted her hall to have the added prestige of being a sort of memorial to the county's soldiers. She had laid her plan before him, and when he had considered it and announced publicly that he had "no use for guys that was always knocking the dames," she thought she had persuaded him, although, really, a pretty farmer's daughter had put into the Legion's mind thoughts of settling down and renting a farm of his own. So he was weary of his public work. Why should he devote his evenings to running around trying to collect money when the dames were willing to leave him free to sit close to the farmer's daughter? He backed Mrs. Benton to the limit of his great ability. He had allowed no one, of late, to "dance vulgar" at his dances. And now he stood on the platform with Mrs. Benton, who knew that if he gave an order for the mayor himself to leave the floor, the whole crowd would applaud him. He was the community hero. But Mrs. Benton had no delusions about him. "A young Lincoln" the sentimental called him. But she remarked, grimly, "Easy enough to begin where Lincoln did, in Illinois. The trick is to finish where he finished."