“That’s right, make him useful, Miss Hauton,” said Mr. Constant, as the reluctant Meredith declared himself most happy and honored in being so employed; but he set his back teeth firmly, and with difficulty suppressed a yawn, which was evident in spite of his efforts to conquer it. Miss Hauton’s animation, however, was more than a match for his indifference. He was not to be let off. Young ladies, and high-bred ones too, will sometimes pin young gentlemen, whether or no. It’s bad policy; for Annie heard him say, as he afterward escaped and walked off the piazza with his friend, and a cigar in his mouth,
“What bores these girls are, with their confounded worsteds and nonsense.”
The evening passed in pretty much the same way. Much gossip, varied with some very bad music, for Miss Hauton sang, and, like most amateurs, would undertake more than she could execute. Annie thought of the “screamer Vita” and that “horrid Caradori,” and wondered that ears that were so delicate, so alive to the smallest fault in the music of others, should have so little perception of their own sins of commission.
“Oh,” said Kate, as they retired to their room at night, “did not the Hauton’s ‘Casta Diva’ set your teeth on edge? Such an absurdity, for a girl like her to attempt what few professional persons can sing. You look tired to death, Annie, and no wonder, for, between you and I, these Hautons are very common girls. Strange! I’ve known them for years, and yet never knew them before. Dress and distance make such a difference.”
“They seem to have so little enjoyment in anything,” remarked Annie. “Every thing seems, in their phrase, ‘a bore.’ Now, to us in the country, every thing is a pleasure. I suppose it is because we have so little,” she continued, smiling, “that we must make the most of it.”
“Well,” said Kate, doubtfully, as if the idea was quite new to her, “is not that better than to be weary with much?”
“And yet you would laugh at one of our little meetings,” replied Annie, “where we talk of books, sing ballads, and sometimes dance after the piano.”
“That is primitive, to be sure,” said Kate, with something of contempt in her heart for such gothic amusements.
“It’s pleasant, at any rate,” thought Annie, as she laid her head on her pillow and remembered, with infinite satisfaction, that she had only one day more to stay among these very fine, very common people.
“And is it possible,” she thought, “that I should be such a fool as to envy them because they looked gay and graceful across the opera house? And half of the rest of them are, doubtless, no better. Oh for one pleasant, spirited talk with Allan Fitzhugh.” And then her mind traveled off to home and a certain clever young lawyer, and she fell asleep dreaming she was in C——, and was once again a belle, (as one always is in one’s dreams,) and awoke to another dull day of neglect and commonplaces, to return home more disenchanted of the gay world and its glitter, more thoroughly contented than she ever would have been with her own intelligent and animated home, had she not passed three days at Woodlawn, amid the dullness of wealth, unembellished by true refinement or enlightened by a ray of wit.