“Mr. Norton, how are you this evening?”
But he would bob, and smirk consciously, up and down on his toes, and slap one hand against the other in an appreciative manner; undismayed if she looked away to talk quite exclusively to somebody else for another five minutes, just perhaps glancing fugitively over at him again to suggest:
“It’s too bad you must stand, Mr. Norton.” Or, when another pause came, “Can’t you find a chair?”
But you could see her still holding him fast behind her while she finished her own chat, and before she had leisure to release him at last with some cue like:
“That chair, perhaps, over there—no, there, Mr. Norton.”
Nice little man. He would fetch the very one. He would even keep it suspended in the air until she pointed out the exact spot and, with eyes and eyebrows tense, nodded approval of her scheme—asking him, however, after he was seated, to stand a moment, so she could move her own chair a bit farther to the right, away from the person whose foot had been planted, as she all the time knew, upon a rung of it.
He would yearn up to her presently and murmur, “A beautiful room, don’t you think, Miss Haviland?”
At which she would wince, and whisper down in his ear; and he wag his head and roll his eyes surreptitiously, sure of not appearing to observe any details she was kind enough to instruct him on. He would smile gratefully, proudly, after it was over, as if her words had put them into a state of blissful communion.
I remember well the day I met them together when she told me Hurrell Oaks was coming to Newfair. I can see her now as she sauntered across the campus, in slow, longish strides, and the would-be graceful little spring she gave when her feet touched the ground, and her head set conveniently forward on her shoulders. She looked at me, and then smiled as if to let me know that it wasn’t her fault if she had to take me all in so at a glance. Why, in a glance like that she’d stare you up and down. If your hat was right, she’d go on toward your feet, and if your shoe-lacings were tied criss-cross instead of straight, it meant something quite deplorable. And if she wasn’t fortunate enough to meet you or anybody else on the way, she doubtless scrutinized the sky and trees and grass with the same connoisseurship. I actually believe she had ideas on how birds ought to fly, and compared the way they flew at Ravenna with the way they flew at Newfair.
That was autumn of my senior year. Miss Haviland’s first book had been published by then, and acclaimed by the critics. The stories, as they appeared one by one in the magazines, had each in turn thrown Newfair into a panic of surprise and admiration.