"Mrs. Elmore," said the sculptor, "you're too many for me. I reckon the procession had better start before I make a fool of myself. Well!" This was all Hoskins could say; but it sufficed. The ladies declared afterwards that if he had added a word more, it would have spoiled it. They had expected him to go to the ball in the character of a miner perhaps, or in that of a trapper of the great plains; but he had chosen to appear more naturally as a courtier of the time of Louis XIV. "When you go in for a disguise," he explained, "you can't make it too complete; and I consider that this limp of mine adds the last touch."
"It's no use to sit up for them," Mrs. Elmore said, when she and her husband had come in from calling good wishes and last instructions after them from the balcony, as their gondola pushed away. "We sha'n't see anything more of them till morning. Now this," she added, "is something like the gayety that people at home are always fancying in Europe. Why, I can remember when I used to imagine that American tourists figured brilliantly in salons and conversazioni, and spent their time in masking and throwing confetti in carnival, and going to balls and opera. I didn't know what American tourists were, then, and how dismally they moped about in hotels and galleries and churches. And I didn't know how stupid Europe was socially,—how perfectly dead and buried it was, especially for young people. It would be fun if things happened so that Lily never found it out! I don't think two offers already,—or three, if you count Rose-Black,—are very bad for any girl; and now this ball, coming right on top of it, where she will see hundreds of handsome officers! Well, she'll never miss Patmos, at this rate, will she?"
"Perhaps she had better never have left Patmos," suggested Elmore gravely.
"I don't know what you mean, Owen," said his wife, as if hurt.
"I mean that it's a great pity she should give herself up to the same frivolous amusements here that she had there. The only good that Europe can do American girls who travel here is to keep them in total exile from what they call a good time,—from parties and attentions and flirtations; to force them, through the hard discipline of social deprivation, to take some interest in the things that make for civilization,—in history, in art, in humanity."
"Now, there I differ with you, Owen. I think American girls are the nicest girls in the world, just as they are. And I don't see any harm in the things you think are so awful. You've lived so long here among your manuscripts that you've forgotten there is any such time as the present. If you are getting so Europeanized, I think the sooner we go home the better."
"I getting Europeanized!" began Elmore indignantly.
"Yes, Europeanized! And I don't want you to be so severe with Lily, Owen. The child stands in terror of you now; and if you keep on in this way, she can't draw a natural breath in the house."
There is always something flattering, at first, to a gentle and peaceable man in the notion of being terrible to any one; Elmore melted at these words, and at the fear that he might have been, in some way that he could not think of, really harsh.
"I should be very sorry to distress her," he began.