X.
Holly’s birthday was quite an event at Waynewood. Aunt Venus outdid herself and there never was such a dinner, from the okra soup to the young guineas and on to the snowy syllabub and the birthday cake with its eighteen flaring pink candles. Uncle Major was there, as were two of Holly’s girl friends, and the little party of six proved most congenial. Holly was in the highest spirits; everyone she knew had been so kind to her. Aunt India had given her dimity for a new dress and a pair of the gauziest white silk stockings that ever crackled against the ear. The dimity was white sprinkled with little Dresden flowers of deep pink. Holly and Rosa and Edith had spent fully an hour before dinner in enthusiastic planning and the fate of the white dimity was settled. It was to be made up over pale pink, and the skirt was to be quite plain save for a single deep flounce at the bottom. Rosa had just the pattern for it and Holly was to drive out to Bellair in a day or so and get it. The Major had brought a blue plush case lined with maroon satin and holding three pairs of scissors, a bodkin, and two ribbon-runners.
“I don’t know what those flat gimcracks are for, Holly,” he said, as she kissed him, “but ‘Ham’ he said he reckoned you’d know what to do with them. I told him, ‘Ham, you’re a married man and I’m a bachelor, and don’t you go and impose on my ignorance. If there’s anything indelicate about those instruments you take ’em out.’ But he said as long as I didn’t see ’em in use it was all right and proper.”
Julian had sent a tiny gold brooch and Winthrop had presented a five-pound box of candy. Of the two the candy made the more pronounced hit. It had come all the way from New York, and was such an imposing affair with its light blue moire-paper box and its yards of silk ribbon! And then the wonderful things inside! Candied violets and rose- and chrysanthemum-petals, grapes hidden in coverings of white cream, little squares of fruit-cake disguised as plebeian caramels, purple raisins and white almonds buried side by side in amber glacé, white and lavender pellets that broke to nothing in the mouth and left a surprising and agreeable flavor of brandy, little smooth nuggets of gold and silver and a dozen other fanciful whims of the confectioner. The girls screamed and laughed with delight, and the Major pretended to feel the effects of three brandy-drops and insisted on telling Miss India about his second wife. There had been other gifts besides. Holly’s old “mammy” had walked in, three miles, with six-guinea-eggs in a nest of gray moss; Phœbe had gigglingly presented a yard of purple silk “h’ar ribbon,” Aunt Venus had brought a brown checked sun-bonnet of her own making, and even Young Tom, holding one thumb tightly between his teeth and standing embarrassedly on one dusty yellow foot, had brought his gift, a bundle of amulets rolled out of newspaper and artistically dyed in beet juice. Yes, everyone had been very kind to Holly, and her eighteenth birthday was nothing short of an occasion.
In the afternoon Holly and Rosa and the Major piled into his buggy and went for a ride, while Miss India retired for her nap, and Winthrop and Edith sat on the porch. Miss Bartram was a tall, graceful, golden-haired beauty of nineteen, with sentimental gray eyes and an affectation of world-weariness which Winthrop found for a time rather diverting. They perched on the joggling-board together and discussed Holly, affinities, Julian Wayne, love, Richmond, New York, Northern customs—which Miss Edith found very strange and bizarre—marriage in the abstract, marriage in the concrete as concerned with Miss Edith, flowers, Corunna, Major Cass, milk-shakes, and many other subjects. The girl was a confirmed flirt, and Winthrop tired of her society long before relief came in the shape of a laughing trio borne into sight behind a jogging gray mule. After supper they played hearts, after a fashion introduced by Miss Bartram. Whoever held the queen of spades when a game was ended received a smudge on the face from each of the other players, whose privilege it was to rub one finger in the soot of the fireplace and inscribe designs on the unfortunate one’s countenance. As the queen of spades and Major Cass developed an affinity early in the evening the latter was a strange and fearsome sight when the party broke up. The Major was to take Miss Edith back to town with him, and the latter entered the buggy to a chorus of remonstrances from the other girls.
“Oh, don’t you go with him!” cried Rosa. “Your face will be a perfect sight by the time you reach home!”
“I really think, Major,” laughed Winthrop, “that maybe you’d better wash the side of your face next to Miss Bartram.”