"Yes, it is high time we were all there," said some one here who was coming up from the lower end of the hall. It was Miss Marr.
"I wonder if she has heard any of this talk, and how much of it?" thought Hope.
But Miss Marr gave no sign of having heard anything of it. She came forward brightly, smiled on this one and that with equal sweetness, and playfully drove them all before her into the long flower-scented room.
The guests were all received in this room; then by twos and threes and fours, after a little interchange of greetings and introductions, they were conducted to the elevator and taken up to the great hall at the top of the house. It was an immense room that Miss Marr had had built several years ago, when her school plan had grown from its first modest limit to a promise of its present more liberal dimensions, and was intended at the start for a gymnasium and play-room. Later it was fitted up so that the gymnastic appliances could be easily removed, and a dance-room or recital-hall made of it upon short notice. On the night of the New Year's parties it always presented a most enchanting aspect, with its flower and fern and palm decorations, and its soft yet brilliant lights. Dolly, to whom it was all new and fresh, cried out enthusiastically as she entered, "Oh, how perfectly beautiful!"
"Isn't it?" agreed another new-comer, a visitor, who was following close upon Dolly's heels; and this visitor was no less a person than our friend Jimmy Dering, who had come on from Boston at Dolly's particular request and to his own particular satisfaction; for now, he argued, "I may stand a chance of hearing 'that girl' play on that Cremona violin."
It was Jimmy's ring at the door-bell that had interrupted that gusty little conversation in the hall. He was the first guest; and as he came into the drawing-room quite alone, and heralded portentously by the solemn butler's loudly spoken "Mr. James Dering," he might have been expected to flinch a little, especially under the battery of all those girls' glances; but Jimmy was not a self-conscious youth, and he had a happy knack of always adjusting himself to circumstances, and making the best of a trying situation. So now he came forward in his own modest, pleasant way, without a bit of awkwardness; and though he blushed a little, it was with such a confiding sort of manner,—a manner that seemed to say, "Now do be friendly to me,"—that every girl there, including Miss Marr herself, was his friend at once.
"He is charming," thought Miss Marr, "so modest and well-mannered, and with such a bright merry boyishness about him."
Even Dolly couldn't spoil the impression he made, as she put up her head and looked about her with a self-congratulatory air, that said plainly,—
"Now, this is my guest and my cousin!"
No, even Dolly couldn't spoil Jimmy Dering's popularity. People liked him in spite of Dolly, and oftentimes they softened towards Dolly herself, and forgave her her blundering, domineering tactlessness, because she was Jimmy's cousin, as these girls did on this occasion, before the evening was over.