"But you'll do," Ruth pronounced, and in relief Maria Angelina relinquished the center of the mirror, and slipped out into the gallery that ran around three sides of the house.
It was built like a chalet, but Maria Angelina had seen no such chalet in her childish summers in Switzerland. Over the edge of the rail she gazed into the huge hall, cleared now for dancing. The furniture had been pushed back beneath the gallery where it was arranged in intimate little groups for future tête-à-têtes, except a few lounging chairs left on the black bear-skins by the chimney-piece. In one corner a screen of pine boughs and daisies shut off the musicians from the streets, and in the opposite corner an English man-servant was presiding over a huge silver punch bowl.
To Maria Angelina, accustomed to Italian interiors, the note was buoyantly informal. And the luxury of service in this informality was a piquant contrast. . . . No one seemed to care what anything cost. . . . They gave dances in a log chalet and sent to New York for the favors and to California for the fruit. . . . Into the huge punch-bowl they poured wine of a value now incredible, since the supply could never be replenished. . . .
Very different would be Lucia's wedding party in the Palazzo Santonini, on that marvelous old service that Pietro polished but three times a year, with every morsel of refreshment arranged and calculated beforehand.
What miracles of economy would be performed in that stone-flagged kitchen, many of them by Mamma's own hands! Suddenly Maria Angelina found a moment to wonder afresh at that mother . . . and with a new vision. . . . For Mamma had come from this profusion.
"They have a regular place at Newport." Ruth was concluding some unheard speech behind her. "But they like this better. . . . This is the life," and with a just faintly discernible note of proprietorship in her air she was off down the stairs.
"Didn't they find Newport rather chilly?" murmured the girl to whom she had been talking. "Wasn't Mrs. M. a Smith or a Brown-Jones or something——?"
"It was something in butterine," said another guest negligently and swore, softly and intensely, at a shoulder strap. "Oh, damn the thing! . . . Well—flop if you want to. I've got nothing to hide."
"You know why girls hide their ears, don't you?" said the other voice, and the second girl flung wearily back, "Oh, so they can have something to show their husbands—I heard that in my cradle!"
"It is rather old," its sponsor acknowledged wittily, and the pair went clattering on.