His entrance made a little pause.
"What an extraordinary-looking person!" whispered Maud Ashurst to Pauline, who colored, hesitated, and did not, for a moment, know what to do. Hesse, standing with her back to the door, had seen nothing; but, struck by the silence, she turned. A meaner nature than hers might have shared Pauline's momentary embarrassment, but there was not a mean fibre in the whole of Hesse's frank, generous being.
"Uncle! dear Uncle!" she cried; and, running forward, she threw her arms around the lean old neck, and gave him half a dozen of her warmest kisses.
"It is my uncle," she explained to the others. "We didn't expect him till to-morrow; and isn't it too delightful that he should come in time to see us all in our dresses!"
Then she drew him this way and that, introducing him to all her particular friends, chattering, dimpling, laughing with such evident enjoyment, such an assured sense that it was the pleasantest thing possible to have her uncle there, that every one else began to share it. The other girls, who, with a little encouragement, a little reserve and annoyed embarrassment on the part of Hesse, would have voted Uncle "a countrified old quiz," and, while keeping up the outward forms of civility, would have despised him in their hearts, infected by Hesse's sweet happiness, began to talk to him with the wish to please, and presently to discover how pleasant his face was, and how shrewd and droll his ideas and comments; and it ended by all pronouncing him an "old dear,"—so true it is that genuine and unaffected love and respect carry weight with them for all the rest of the world.
Uncle was immensely amused by the costumes. He recalled the fancy balls of his youth, and gave the party some ideas on dress which had never occurred to any of them before. He could not at all understand the principle of selection on which the different girls had chosen their various characters.
"That gypsy queen looked as if she ought to be teaching a Sunday-school," he told Hesse afterward. "Little Red Riding Hood was too big for her wolf; and as for that scampish little nun of yours, I don't believe the stoutest convent ever built could hold her in for half a day."
"Come with us to Mrs. Shuttleworth's. It will be a pretty scene, and something for you to tell Cousin Marianne about when you go back," urged Mrs. De Lancey.
"Oh, do, do!" chimed in Hesse. "It will be twice as much fun if you are there, Uncle!"
But Uncle was tired by his journey, and would not consent; and I am afraid that Pauline and Grace were a little relieved by his decision. False shame and the fear of "people" are powerful influences.