"Oh, Uncle Bob!" she cried, laughing at his density, "don't you know yet how little I care for ceremony? 'Tis not that—by any manner of means. But I want to surprise Robert,—I want to meet him at some fine function, in all my fine feathers, and see if he'll know me! You know, it is five years, nearly, since we saw him. Have I changed much, Uncle Bob?"
"Precious little have you changed, sweet minx!" answered Glenowen. "You're just the same small, peppery, saucy, unmanageable, thin brown witch that you were then, only a little taller, a little more good-looking, a little—a very little—more dignified. No fear but he'd know you, though he saw you not for a score of years. 'Twere as easy perhaps for a man to hate you as love you, my Barbe! But forget you! Oh, no!"
So it was that in the walks which they took about the point of Manhattan Island, during the first three or four days after their coming, they avoided Bowling Green, save in the dim hours of twilight; and Glenowen, prone to humour Barbara in everything, had a care to shun the resorts which Robert Gault affected. He learned, by no means to his surprise, that Robert was uncompromisingly committed to the Tory party, but this he did not feel called upon to tell Barbara.
"Time enough! Time enough!" said he to himself, half whimsical, half sorrowful. "Let the child have her little play with all the mirth that's in it! Let hearts not bleed until they must! She won't forgive him,—and he won't yield,—or I'm not Bob Glenowen!"
In New York, where most of his life had been spent, Glenowen knew everybody; and he was persona grata to almost everybody of consequence. His standing was so impregnable, his antecedents so unimpeachable, his social talents so in demand, that even the most arrogant of the old Tory aristocrats—the Delanceys, the Philipses, the Beverley Robinsons—were not disposed to let their hostility to his views hamper their hospitality to his person.
It followed, therefore, as a matter of course, that almost before she had gathered her wits after the excitement of the journey and the changed surroundings, Barbara found herself afloat upon the whirl of New York gaieties. Every night, in the solitude of her bedroom in the old Dutch house, in the discreet confidence of her pillow, she was homesick, very homesick, and a child again. She would sob for Aunt Hitty, and Doctor John, and Doctor Jim,—and for big, round-faced, furry "Mr. Grim," whom she had so tearfully left behind,—and for Black Prince, who, she felt sure, would let no one else ride him in her absence,—and for dear old Debby in her lonely cabin. She would think very tenderly of Amos,—and then, with a very passion of tenderness, of her own little room over the porch, now silent and deserted. With great surges of pathos she would picture Mistress Mehitable going into the little room every day, and dusting it a bit, and then sitting down by the bed and wishing Barbara would come back. In such a melting mood Barbara would resolve not to be horrid any more, but to send for Robert the first thing in the morning, and tell him just how glad she was to see him.
But when morning came, she would be no more the homesick child, but a very gay, petulant, spoiled, and sparkling young woman, her head full of excitements and conquests to come.
CHAPTER XXV.
To her first ball Barbara went in a chair, just five days after her arrival in New York. The method of locomotion appealed greatly to her mood; and as the bearers jogged her gently along, she kept her piquant face at the window and felt as if she were playing one of the pictures of court ladies on their way to St. James's,—ladies such as she had often dreamed over in the London prints. For this ball, given at the Van Griff house, just a few blocks from her own lodgings, she was dressed in the very height of the mode, as to all save her hair. She was obstinate in her aversion to the high, elaborate coiffure,—in her adherence to the simple fashion and the single massive curl which she had decided upon, after many experiments, as best becoming her face. She liked her hair, accounting it her only beauty, and rather than disguise it she would let the mode go hang. For the rest, her attire met the severest demands of Uncle Bob, who was even won, at the last, to approve what he called her eccentricity in the matter of hair. He decided that her very precise modishness in other respects would prove her title to independence in the one respect; and it was with unqualified satisfaction that he contemplated the effect she would produce on the New York fashionables.