from the shock of the novel ideas. “Do you?”
“Oh, I'm such a stranger in Boston—I've lived abroad so long—that I don't know. One hears all kinds of things. But I'm so glad you're not one of those—pessimists!”
“Well,” said Mr. Mavering, still thoughtfully, “I don't know that I can speak by the card exactly. I can't say how it is now. I haven't been at a Class Day spread since my own Class Day; I haven't even been at Commencement more than once or twice. But in my time here we didn't expect the young ladies to show us attentions; at any rate, we didn't wait for them to do it. We were very glad, to be asked to meet them, and we thought it an honour if the young ladies would let us talk or dance with them, or take them to picnics. I don't think that any of them could complain of want of attention.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Pasmer, “that's what I preached, that's what I prophesied, when I brought my daughter home from Europe. I told her that a girl's life in America was one long triumph; but they say now that girls have more attention in London even than in Cambridge. One hears such dreadful things!”
“Like what?” asked Mr. Mavering, with the unserious interest which Mrs. Primer made most people feel in her talk.
“Oh; it's too vast a subject. But they tell you about charming girls moping the whole evening through at Boston parties, with no young men to talk with, and sitting from the beginning to the end of an assembly and not going on the floor once. They say that unless a girl fairly throws herself at the young men's heads she isn't noticed. It's this terrible disproportion of the sexes that's at the root of it, I suppose; it reverses everything. There aren't enough young men to go half round, and they know it, and take advantage of it. I suppose it began in the war.”
He laughed, and, “I should think,” he said, laying hold of a single idea out of several which she had presented, “that there would always be enough young men in Cambridge to go round.”
Mrs. Pasmer gave a little cry. “In Cambridge!”
“Yes; when I was in college our superiority was entirely numerical.”
“But that's all passed long ago, from what I hear,” retorted Mrs. Pasmer. “I know very well that it used to be thought a great advantage for a girl to be brought up in Cambridge, because it gave her independence and ease of manner to have so many young men attentive to her. But they say the students all go into Boston now, and if the Cambridge girls want to meet them, they have to go there too. Oh, I assure you that, from what I hear, they've changed all that since our time, Mr. Mavering.”
Mrs. Pasmer was certainly letting herself go a little more than she would have approved of in another. The result was apparent in the jocosity of this heavy Mr. Mavering's reply.
“Well, then, I'm glad that I was of our time, and not of this wicked generation. But I presume that unnatural supremacy of the young men is brought low, so to speak, after marriage?”
Mrs. Primer let herself go a little further. “Oh, give us an equal chance,” she laughed, “and we can always take care of ourselves, and something more. They say,” she added, “that the young married women now have all the attention that girls could wish.”
“H'm!” said Mr. Mavering, frowning. “I think I should be tempted to box my boy's ears if I saw him paying another man's wife attention.”
“What a Roman father!” cried Mrs. Pasmer, greatly amused, and letting herself go a little further yet. She said to herself that she really must find out who this remarkable Mr. Mavering was, and she cast her eye over the hall for some glimpse of the absent Munt, whose arm she meant to take, and whose ear she meant to fill with questions. But she did not see him, and something else suggested itself. “He probably wouldn't let you see him, or if he did, you wouldn't know it.”
“How not know it?”
Mrs. Primer did not answer. “One hears such dreadful things. What do you say—or you'll think I'm a terrible gossip—”
“Oh no;” said Mr. Mavering, impatient for the dreadful thing, whatever it was.
Mrs. Primer resumed: “—to the young married women meeting last winter just after a lot of pretty girls had came out, and magnanimously resolving to give the Buds a chance in society?”
“The Buds?”
“Yes, the Rose-buds—the debutantes; it's an odious little word, but everybody uses it. Don't you think that's a strange state of things for America? But I can't believe all those things,” said Mrs. Pasmer, flinging off the shadow of this lurid social condition. “Isn't this a pretty scene?”
“Yes, it is,” Mr. Mavering admitted, withdrawing his mind gradually from a consideration of Mrs. Pasmer's awful instances. “Yes!” he added, in final self-possession. “The young fellows certainly do things in a great deal better style nowadays than we used to.”
“Oh yes, indeed! And all those pretty girls do seem to be having such a good time!”
“Yes; they don't have the despised and rejected appearance that you'd like to have one believe.”
“Not in the least!” Mrs. Pasmer readily consented. “They look radiantly happy. It shows that you can't trust anything that people say to you.” She abandoned the ground she had just been taking without apparent shame for her inconsistency. “I fancy it's pretty much as it's always been: if a girl is attractive, the young men find it out.”
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Mavering, unbending with dignity, “the young married women have held another meeting, and resolved to give the Buds one more chance.”
“Oh, there are some pretty mature Roses here,” said Mrs. Pasmer, laughing evasively. “But I suppose Class Day can never be taken from the young girls.”
“I hope not,” said Mr. Mavering. His wandering eye fell upon some young men bringing refreshments across the nave toward them, and he was reminded to ask Mrs. Pasmer, “Will you have something to eat?” He had himself had a good deal to eat, before he took up his position at the advantageous point where John Munt had found him.
“Why, yes, thank you,” said Mrs. Pasmer. “I ought to say, 'An ice, please,' but I'm really hungry, and—”
“I'll get you some of the salad,” said Mr. Mavering, with the increased liking a man feels for a woman when she owns to an appetite. “Sit down here,” he added, and he caught a vacant chair toward her. When he turned about from doing so, he confronted a young gentleman coming up to Mrs. Pasmer with a young lady on his arm, and making a very low bow of relinquishment.
II.
The men looked smilingly at each other without saying anything; and the younger took in due form the introduction which the young lady gave him.
“My mother, Mr. Mavering.”
“Mr. Mavering!” cried Mrs. Pasmer, in a pure astonishment, before she had time to colour it with a polite variety of more conventional emotions. She glanced at the two men, and gave a little “Oh?” of inquiry and resignation, and then said, demurely, “Let me introduce you to Mr. Mavering, Alice,” while the young fellow laughed nervously, and pulled out his handkerchief, partly to hide the play of his laughter, and partly to wipe away the perspiration which a great deal more laughing had already
