She began her rattle with Schuyler Van der Berg; she kept it up with Peter Van Loon and fine handsome Victor Graham, and concluded it at the end of the evening with Raymond Armitage, who was of a very different fibre from the others,—a harder, coarser fibre altogether.
But Dolly found Raymond Armitage the most interesting of the four, for it was Raymond who to her mind was the most polite, the most attractive in his way of doing and saying things,—his way of listening admiringly to everything she said, of laughing and applauding all her blunt speeches and frisky ways. If Jimmy had not been so popular, and consequently so necessarily engaged in responding to this popularity, he would have noticed how Dolly was "carrying on," and have tried at least to check her; but when Jimmy was not talking with a little knot of boys and girls about boat-crews and foot-ball and the coming season's races, he was dancing with Hope, and in every pause of the dance he talked about music; and that entirely absorbed both of them. But there came at last the grand concluding dance that brought them all more closely together. It was that concluding dance that Kate Van der Berg had spoken of as the best fun of all. This dance had been introduced and taught by Miss Marr herself at the very start of her school, and was by this time perfectly well known to all her girls, and readily understood by any new guest of the evening under the guidance of his partner. It was an old French dance,—a "gavotte," so called. Miss Marr had told them its history. It was a kind of minuet that Marie Antoinette had introduced as a pendant to the minuet proper, adding other steps, and renaming it. She told them that another point in its history was, that the name was said to be derived from the town of Gap, whose inhabitants were called "Gavots" and "Gavottes," and that it was not unlikely that it was an old country dance of that region, and that Marie Antoinette made use of it in her re-arrangement, and also called it a minuet de la cour.
But wherever it had its origin, it was a charming dance, and Miss Marr had been taught it thoroughly in her early youth when she visited her French relations in France as a pretty French costume-party dance; and she in her turn had introduced various pretty changes, the prettiest and most novel being at the very end, where, swinging all around together, they pair off at last in regular appointed order, and pass through an archway of flowers, each pair receiving in this passing a beautiful little basket, its woven cover of flowers concealing two New Year's gifts,—one a pretty trinket, a ring or brooch or bracelet, sent by some member of the pupil's family for the pupil herself; the other a comic accompaniment in the way of a gay mirth-provoking toy, to be bestowed upon the partner,—the guest of the pupil on this occasion,—these latter being furnished by Miss Marr, and most choicely selected, some of them coming from Paris and Vienna. The girls were quite as much interested in these funny toys as in their own trinkets; and when all had passed the archway, there was a gathering together of the whole party, and a great frolic over the examination of the basket's contents; Kate almost forgetting the glow and sparkle of her new amethyst ring in the fun of the little gutta-percha man, who was made to wink and laugh and shake his fist at Victor when it was presented to him by Kate. And when Hope lifted her basket-cover and found beside the tiny Geneva watch sent to her by her father, the merry little figure of a girl playing a violin, while a woolly bear danced before her on a wooden stand, Jimmy, who was Hope's partner, with gay mimicry began to imitate the bear, and Kate cried out,—
"Wouldn't you, wouldn't you though, really like to dance to Hope's playing?" and quick as a flash, Jimmy answered, with a gallant little bow,—
"I'd like better to listen."
"You'd like to listen and to dance, too, if you could hear Hope play the Gungl' waltzes; you couldn't keep your feet still," added Kate.
"Oh, if I could hear you play, Miss Benham!" and Jimmy turned eagerly to Hope. "There are no waltzes I like so well as those. I'm coming in to-morrow afternoon to bring my cousin some music that I've brought on for her from her old teacher in Boston, and she is going to try it with me in the music-room here at half-past three o'clock. Miss Marr has kindly given us permission, and oh, would you, could you, Miss Benham, join us at four o'clock and play one of the Gungl' waltzes, just one? It would give me such pleasure."
"I—I don't know that Miss Marr would—"
"Oh, I am sure she would; I'll ask her.—Miss Marr," and Jimmy put out a detaining hand, as Miss Marr at that moment was passing, and in three minutes more his request was made and granted. Hope had her full permission to join the two in the music-room the next afternoon and play the Gungl' waltzes if she would like to do so.
"And you will like, won't you?" pleaded Jimmy, in his naive boyish way.