"We will give them all the slip, my dear."—Page 61.
Throughout that embarrassing and long-drawn-out dinner Alice was a help and comfort at least to her hostess, and did steadily and patiently what she could to cover the blunders of the girl beside her. Utterly unaccustomed to even the formalities of a fashionable boarding-house table, Mamie made constant blunders with forks and spoons and other instruments of torture for the uninitiated; but these were trifles compared with the blunders of her tongue. She made evident attempts to cover her ignorance with regard to table formalities by much gay talk. She laughed incessantly, and told many jokes at her brother's expense. She said: "him and me," and "her and I," and "you folks," and a dozen other provincialisms. When they returned to Mrs. Burnham's parlor, it was almost worse—for then Mamie sang; and it was hard for her hostess to determine of which she was most ashamed, the bad taste of the girl's selections or the less than mediocre execution.
Still, the music was by no means the worst feature of that memorable hour. Mamie's next startling venture was a pretence of being offended by what she called Erskine's desertion of her at dinner-time.
"Oh, you needn't come around," she said rudely, as he rose to arrange her music. "I can fix things myself, thank you, and Mr. Colchester will turn the music for me, I know; won't you, Mr. Colchester?" with a jaunty little smile for the stately Boston cousin. "You can't make up for rudeness to me, sir, as easy as you think. I make fellows who want my company mind their p's and q's, don't I, Jim?"
The stalwart brother thus appealed to replied only by a slight embarrassed laugh, and the hostess had time out of her own embarrassment to bestow a swift glance of pity upon him. He had already seen enough of another sort of world to realize that his pretty, pert little sister, the idol of his country home, was not making as good an impression on these new friends of his as he wished she were. If the ladies had but known it, the poor young fellow was at that moment saying to himself:—
"Why can't Mamie act more like that Miss Warder, I wonder? There's an awful difference between them, and she doesn't catch on, somehow."
Throughout the interminable evening, Alice Warder proved not only the excellent foil that Mrs. Burnham had foreseen, but a faithful and efficient coadjutor. Not a lift of her eyebrows or a stray glance of any kind betrayed a second's surprise at the character of the guests invited to meet her dignified cousin and herself. She was gracious and friendly to such an extent that before the evening was over, Mamie, who was frankness itself, said admiringly:—
"How long you going to stay in this place? Dear me! I wish you was going to be here all winter; I can see that you and me would be real cronies."
In the privacy of Mrs. Burnham's bedroom, whither Alice was taken to put on her wraps, the girl bestowed her closing touch of sweetness and balm upon her hostess.