If he believed it, he looked very tranquil, the startled Maria Angelina thought, surprised into an upward glance. The two men were smiling very frankly at each other. Mrs. Blair did not protest but rose, remarking, "Come, Barry, since we are discovered. You can have something cool afterwards."
"I'll have little Cousin afterwards," said Barry Elder. "I want to be the first young man she has danced with in America."
"You won't be the last," Mr. Blair told him with a twinkling glance at Maria Angelina's lovely little face.
"One of Jane's youngsters," he added, explanatorily to her. "She always has a lot around—she says they are the companions her son would have had if she'd had one."
Then, before Maria Angelina's polite but bewildered attention, he said more comprehensibly, "You'll find Jane a lot younger than Ruth . . . Barry's a clever chap—special work on one of the papers. Was in the aviation. Did a play that fluked last year. Too much Harvard in it, I expect. But a clever chap, very clever. Like him," he added decisively.
Maria Angelina had heard of Harvard. Her mother's father had been a Harvard man. But she did not understand just why too much Harvard would make a play fluke nor what a play did when it fluked, but she asked no questions and sat very still, looking out at the dancing couples.
She saw her Cousin Jane whirling past. She tried to imagine her mother dancing with young men at the Hotel Excelsior and she could not. Already she wondered if she had better write everything.
Then the dancing pair came back to them and the young man sat down and talked a little to her cousins. But at the music's recommencement he turned directly to her.
"Signorina, are you going to do me the honor?"
He had a merry way with him as if he were laughing ever so little at her, and Maria Angelina's heart which had been beating quite fast before began to skip dizzily.