“Yes, Kent. I am working hard, too, harder than I have ever worked in my life. I was terribly disappointed when papa would not let me go to Paris this winter, but insisted on the year of hard drawing in New York, to test myself and find myself, as it were, and I have been determined to make good. I am drawing all the time, and you know that is virtuous when I am simply demented on the subject of color. I let myself work in color on Saturday in Central Park, but the rest of the time it is charcoal from the antique or from life, with classes in composition and design. There is no use in talking about being a decorator if you can’t draw. I hope to be in Paris next year, and then I shall reap my reward and simply wallow in color.”
When supper was over, they were all called on to stand up for the Virginia Reel, which Mrs. McLean played with such spirit that Mr. Oldham and Dr. McLean could not keep their feet still; and before the astonished eyes of Edwin Green and Andy McLean, who had other plans, Mr. Oldham seized Molly and Dr. McLean Nance, and they danced down the middle and back again with as much spirit as they had ever shown in their youth.
“It takes the old timers to dance the old dances, hey, Mr. Oldham?” said the panting doctor as he came up the middle smiling and cutting pigeon wings, while Nance arose to the occasion and “chasseed” to his steps like any belle of the sixties. Even Miss Alice Fern forgot her dignity and romped, but she was very gay, as Edwin had sought her out when Molly danced off with Mr. Oldham. He had remembered that he had been rather remiss in his attentions to his fair cousin.
How they did dance!—and all of the extra men danced with each other, so there were no wall flowers. Richard Blount claimed Melissa as a partner, and they delighted the crowd by singing as they danced a song that Melissa had taught Richard, as she told him of some of the mountain dance games, the words fitting themselves to Mrs. McLean’s lively tunes.
“‘Old man, old man, let me have your daughter?’
‘Yes, young man, for a dollar and a quarter.
Pick up her duds and pitch ’em up behind her.’
‘Here’s your money, old man, I’ve got your daughter.’”
After the dance they drew around the open fire in the hall and roasted chestnuts and popped corn and told stories, and had a very merry old-fashioned time capping quotations. And finally the one thing wanting, as Molly thought, came to pass, and Professor Green read Dickens’ Christmas Carol just as he had three years before, when he and his sister gave Molly the surprise party at Queen’s in her Sophomore year.
“At the risk of making myself verra unpopular, I am afraid I shall have to say it is time for all of us to be in bed,” said Mrs. McLean, when the professor closed the worn old copy of Dickens.
“Oh, not ’til we have had a little more dancing, please, dear Mrs. McLean,” came in a chorus from the young people; and Professor Green told her that it would be a pity to throw Dodo back on a rocking chair for a partner before he had had a little more practice with flesh and blood. So up they all sprang, and with Miss Grace at the piano, to relieve the good-natured Mrs. McLean, who had thrummed her fingers sore, off they went into more waltzes and two-steps, even the shy Melissa dancing with Richard Blount as though she had been at balls every night of her life. Otoyo and Mr. Seshu hopped around together as though “step-twoing” and “dance-rounding” were the national dances of Japan.
And so ended the delightful surprise party. Before they departed, Dr. McLean drew his wife under the mistletoe and kissed her.
“Just to show you bashful young fellows how it is done,” said the jovial doctor.