He ventured to whisper a protest to her once. But she answered:
“Papa! don’t be ridiculous! A girl can’t discriminate. I can’t hurt a poor boy’s feelings just because he can’t carry his liquor as well as the rest. Besides, I’m the hostess.”
Her father cast his eyes up in helplessness at such a creed.
But even Immy and Patty could not ignore the ill fortune of Barbara Salem, whose partner was so tipsy that he reeled her into a handsome buhl escritoire and broke the glass door with Barbara’s head, then fell with her to the floor and gaped while the blood from her slashed brow ran through her hair and over her white shoulders and her white dress and soaked through the linen cover into the carpet beneath.
Old Mr. and Mrs. Salem were aghast at the family calamity, while the young man wept himself almost sober with remorse. Keith’s coat was stained with red as he carried Barbara upstairs to a bedroom to wait for the doctor.
In the ladies’ dressing-room, which Keith had to invade, two young women had already fainted; both from tight stays, they said. One of them was half undressed and unlacing her corsets with more wisdom than her heavy eyes indicated.
Immy put Keith out and ministered to the casualties.
But the dance went on. Some old prudes were shocked, but the rest said, “A party is a party, and accidents will happen.”
Dear old Mrs. Piccard said to Patty:
“You’re lucky in having only two carpets ruined, my dear. I had three destroyed at my last reception. But it’s nothing to what went on in the good old days, if the truth were told. My father was with General Washington, you know. And really——! Papa was with the army that night when General Washington himself danced with General Greene’s wife for three hours without sitting down. Those were the heroic days, my dear! And drinking! Our young men are comparatively abstemious.”