She picked up her sewing without a flutter or a blush, and Orrin, not daring to offer her the flimsy compliment of incredulity he would have paid another woman who had volunteered a confession disparaging to her personal charms, was still casting about in his mind for words that should praise, yet not offend, when his opportunity was lost through Jessie's return to the room.
CHAPTER VIII.
"You find us, in humble imitation of Mr. Turveydrop, still using our little arts to polish—polish!" said Jessie Kirke, mimicking the famous trowel gesture of the Professor of Deportment, as Orrin Wyllys entered Mrs. Baxter's drawing-room on the evening of the fourth of January.
The Lady President's "collegiate re-unions" on the first and third Thursdays of each month had, up to this winter, been declared a nuisance by the class for whose benefit she had inaugurated the series; to wit, the homeless, graceless students whose intellectual training was committed to her husband and his confrères, while their polite education was left to Fate and the hap-hazard culture of promiscuous society. Now, promiscuous society—(the term is Mrs. Baxter's—not mine) in Hamilton, although less detrimental to the principles, manners, and conversational powers of unguarded youth than the same foe would have been in a region more remote from the great humanizing and refining centre expressed, to the visual organs, by the square, cream-colored mansion at the right of the college campus—was yet inimical to the best interests (another stolen phrase!) of the aforesaid matriculated youngsters. To counteract the evil, the presidential residence was converted, on the evenings I have designated, into a social reformatory, and the mistress put forth her utmost energy to render the process of amelioration pleasant to the subjects thereof. The success of her system, which had gone into operation two years before, had been less than indifferent up to the date of her young kinswoman's arrival. Simultaneously with her appearance at the pillared portal of the cream-colored Centre, the cause of elegant deportment and colloquial accomplishments began to look up in the contiguous halls of learning. The "reception" on the ensuing Thursday was well attended, the second was a "crush "—the supply of lemonade and sponge-cake inadequate to the demand.
This was the third, and the hostess, elate with past, and sanguine of prospective, victories, had, with the assistance of her guest, bedecked her rooms with New Year's garlands and floral legends. As an ingenious tribute to the learning of the major portion of the assembly, Mrs. Baxter had accomplished a Latinization of certain stock phrases of welcome, and was immensely proud of the "classic air" imparted to her saloon by these.
"I suppose they are all right," Jessie said dubiously to Orrin, when he inspected them. "My knowledge of the dead tongue is confined to the musty sayings everybody has learned by heart—'Sic transit gloria mundi,' 'Mirabile dictu,' and the like."
"Salve!" blossomed into being in heather, and pink-and-white paper roses over the mantel opposite the door of the front parlor. Over that in the back—"Jubemus vos salvere," while "O faustum et felicem hunc diem!" was tacked above the piano in the music-room.
"To polish! to polish!" reiterated Jessie, stroking her gloved left hand with her right, and looking so roguishly beautiful that Orrin had no difficulty in throwing an expression of intense admiration into his gaze.