Boston Neighbours In Town and Out Part 12

The photograph won the hearts of all the female friends of the family, who saw it in confidence, and increased their desire to see the original. But Mr. Ponsonby was not able, as had been expected, to come over in the summer. Violent rains and consequent floods in the Australian sheep-runs inflicted so much damage upon his stock that the marriage was again postponed, at least for a year, in which time he hoped to get things on a better basis. Lily kept up her spirits bravely.

She did not go to Mount Desert with her mother and sisters, but stayed at home, wrote her letters, hemst.i.tched her linen, declaring that she was glad of the time to get up a proper outfit, and went to bed early, keeping a pleasant home for her father and the boys as they went and came, to their huge satisfaction, and gaining in bloom and freshness; so that she was in fine condition in the fall to nurse her mother through a low fever caught at a Bar Harbor hotel, also to wait upon Susan, nervous and worn down with late hours and perpetual racket, and Eleanor, laid up with a sprained ankle from an overturn in a buckboard.

Eleanor, though not yet eighteen, was to come out next winter, Lily declaring that she should give up b.a.l.l.s--what was the use when one was engaged? She stayed at home and saw that her sisters were kept in ball-gowns and gloves, no light task, taking the part of Cinderella _con amore_. She certainly looked younger than Susan at least, who since she had taken up the Harvard Annex course, besides going out, began to grow worn and thin.

One February morning Eleanor's voice rose above the usual babble at the Carey breakfast-table.

"Can't I go, mamma?"

"Where, dear?"

"Why, to the Racket Club german at Eliot Hall, next Tuesday. It's going to be so nice, you know, only fifty couples, and we ought to answer directly; and I have just had notes from Harry Foster and Julian Jervis asking me for it."

"And which shall you dance with?" asked Lily.

"Why, Harry, of course."

"I would not have any _of course_ about it," said Lily, rather sharply.

Harry Foster was now repeating Jack Allston's late role in the Carey family, with Eleanor for his ostensible object. "My advice is, dance with Julian; and I suppose I must see that your pink net is in order, if Miss Macalister cannot be induced to hurry up your new lilac."

"Shall we not go, mamma?"

"Why, mamma, how can we?" broke in Susan, who had her own game in another quarter. "It's the 'Old Men of Menottomy' night, and we missed the last, you know."

"Those old Cambridge parties are the dullest affairs going," said Eleanor; "I'd rather stay at home than go to them."

"That is very ungrateful of you," said Lily, laughing, "when I gave up my place in the 'Misses Carey' to you, for of course I don't go to either."

"Can't I go to Eliot Hall with Roland, mamma? He is asked, and Mrs.

Thorne is a patroness; she will chaperon me after I get there."

"Roland will want to go right back to Cambridge, I know--the middle of the week and everything! He'll be late enough without coming here."

"Then can't I take Margaret, and depend on Mrs. Thorne?" went on Eleanor, with the persistence of the youngest pet. "Half the girls go with their maids that way."

"Oh, I don't know, my dear," said poor Mrs. Carey, looking helplessly from Eleanor, flushed and eager, to Susan, silent, but with a tightly shut look on her pretty mouth, that betokened no sign of yielding. "I never liked it--in a hired carriage--and you can't expect _me_ to go over the Cambridge bridges without James. And I hate asking Mrs. Thorne anything, she always makes such a favour of it, and the less trouble it is the more fuss she gets up about it. Do you and Susan settle it somehow between you, and let me know when it is decided."

"Let me go with Eleanor, mamma," said Lily. "Mrs. Freeman will probably go with Emmeline and Bessie, and she will let me sit with her. I will wear my old black silk and look the chaperon all over--as good a one, I will wager, as any there. It will be good fun to act the part, and I have been engaged so long that I should think I might really begin to appear in it."

Mr. Carey was heard to growl, as he pushed back his chair and threw his pile of newspapers on to the floor, that he wished Lily would stop that nonsensical talk about her engagement once for all; but the girls did not pause in their chatter, and Mrs. Carey was too much relieved to argue the point.

"Only tell me what to do and I will do it," was this poor lady's favourite form of speech. She set off with a clear conscience on Tuesday evening with Susan for the a.s.sembly at Cambridge, where a promisingly learned post-graduate of good fortune and family was wont to unbend himself by sitting out the dances and explaining the theory of evolution to Miss Susan Carey, who was as mildly scientific as was considered proper for a young lady of her position. Lily accompanied Eleanor to more frivolous spheres, where chaperonage was an easier if less exciting task; for once having touched up her sister's dress in the ante-room, and handed her over to Julian Jervis, she bade her farewell for the evening, and herself took the arm of Harry Foster, who, gloomily cynical at the sight of Eleanor, radiant in her new lilac, with another partner, had hardly a word to say as he settled her on a bench on the raised platform where the chaperons congregated, except to ask her sulkily if she would not "take a turn," which she declined without mincing matters, and took the only seat left, next to Mrs. Jack Allston, who was matronising a cousin.

"What, Lily! you here?" asked Mrs. Thorne.

"Oh, yes; mamma has gone to Cambridge with Susan, and said I might come over with Eleanor, and she was sure Mrs. Freeman,"--with a smile at that lady--"would look after us if we needed it."

"With the greatest pleasure," said Miss Morgan, who sat by her sister.

"Here have Elizabeth and I both come to take care of our girls, as half-a-dozen elders sometimes hang on to one child at a circus. We both of us had set our hearts on seeing _this_ german and would not give up, so you see there is an extra chaperon at your service."

"Doesn't your mother find it very troublesome to have three girls out at once?" asked Mrs. Allston of Lily, bluntly.

"Hardly three; I am not out this winter, you know."

"I don't see any need of staying in because one is engaged, unless, indeed, it were a very short one, like mine."

Mrs. Allston cast a rapid and deprecatory glance at the "old black silk," which had seen its best days, and then a still swifter one at her own gown, from Worth, but so unbecoming to her that it was easy for Lily to smile serenely back, though her heart sank within her at her prospects for the evening.

At the close of the first figure of the german, a slight flutter seemed to run through the crowd, tending toward the entrance.

"Who is that standing in the doorway--just come in?" asked Lily, in the very lowest tone, of Miss Morgan. Miss Morgan looked, shook her head decidedly, and then pa.s.sed the inquiry on to Mrs. Thorne, who hesitated and hemmed.

"He spoke to me when he first came--but--I really don't recollect--it must be Mr.--Mr.----"

"Arend Van Voorst," crushingly put in Mrs. Allston, with somewhat the effect of a garden-roller. Both of the older ladies looked interested.

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Thorne, "I sent him a card when I heard he was in Boston. I have not seen him--at least since he was very young--but his mother--of course I know Mrs. Van Voorst--a little."

"I don't know them at all," said Miss Morgan; "but if that's young Van Voorst, he is better looking than there is any occasion for."

"He was a cla.s.smate and intimate friend of Jack's," said Mrs. Allston, loftily.

"I never saw him before," said Lily, incautiously.

"He only went out in a very small set in Boston," said Mrs. Allston. "I met him often, of course."

"You were too young, Lily, to meet any one when he was in college," said Miss Morgan, who liked "putting down Julia Allston."

"It's too bad the girls are all engaged," said the simple-minded Mrs.

Freeman; "he won't have any partner."

"_He_ wouldn't dance!" said Julia, too tough to feel Miss Morgan's light touches. "Very likely, as you asked him, Mrs. Thorne, he may feel that he _must_ take a turn with Ada; and when he knows that Kitty Bradstreet is with me, very likely he will ask her out of compliment to me. He will hardly ask me to dance at such a very young party as this; I don't see any of the young married set here but myself."

Mr. Van Voorst stood quietly in the doorway, hardly appearing to notice anything, but when Ada Thorne's partner was called out, and she was left sitting alone, he walked across the room and sat down by her. He did not ask her to dance, but it was perhaps as great an honour to have the Van Voorst of New York sitting by her, holding her bouquet and bending over her in an att.i.tude of devotion; and if what he said did not flatter her vanity, it touched another sentiment equally strong in Ada even at that early period of life.

"Who is that girl in black, sitting with the chaperons?"

"Oh, that is Lily Carey."

"Why is she there?"

"She is chaperoning Eleanor, her youngest sister, that girl in lilac who is on the floor now. They look alike, don't they?"

"Why, she is not married?"

"No, only engaged. She has been engaged a great while, and never goes to b.a.l.l.s or anything now--only she came here with Eleanor because Mrs.

Carey wanted to go to Cambridge with Susan. There are three of the Careys out; it must be a dreadful bother, don't you think so?"

"To whom is she engaged?"