Who introduced this young Mr. Mavering to you?”
“Mr. Munt.”
“Mr. Munt!”
“Yes; he came for me; he said you sent him. He introduced Mr. Mavering, and he was very polite. Mr. Mavering said we ought to go up into the gallery and see how it looked; and Mr. Munt said he'd been up, and Mr. Mavering promised to bring me back to him, but he was not there when we got back. Mr. Mavering got me some ice cream first, and then he found you for me.”
“Really,” said Mrs. Pasmer to herself, “the combat thickens!” To her daughter she said, “He's very handsome.”
“He laughs too much,” said the daughter. Her mother recognised her uncandour with a glance. “But he waltzes well,” added the girl.
“Waltzes?” echoed the mother. “Did you waltz with him, Alice?”
“Everybody else was dancing. He asked me for a turn or two, and of course I did it. What difference?”
“Oh, none—none. Only—I didn't see you.”
“Perhaps you weren't looking.”
“Yes, I was looking all the time.”
“What do you mean, mamma?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Pasmer, in a final despair, “we don't know anything about them.”
“We're the only people here who don't, then,” said her daughter. “The ladies were bowing right left to him all the time, and he kept asking if I knew this one and that one, and all I could say was that some of them were distant cousins, but I wasn't acquainted with them. I would think he'd wonder who we were.”
“Yes,” said the mother thoughtfully.
“There! he's laughing with that other student. But don't look!”
Mrs. Pasmer saw well enough out of the corner of her eye the joking that went on between Mavering and his friend, and it did not displease her to think that it probably referred to Alice. While the young man came hurrying back to them she glanced at the girl standing near her with a keenly critical inspection, from which she was able to exclude all maternal partiality, and justly decided that she was one of the most effective girls in the place. That costume of hers was perfect. Mrs. Pasmer wished now that she could have compared it more carefully with other costumes; she had noticed some very pretty ones; and a feeling of vexation that Alice should have prevented this by being away so long just when the crowd was densest qualified her satisfaction. The people were going very fast now. The line of the oval in the nave was broken into groups of lingering talkers, who were conspicuous to each other, and Mrs. Pasmer felt that she and her daughter were conspicuous to all the rest where they stood apart, with the two Maverings converging upon them from different points, the son nodding and laughing to friends of both sexes as he came, the father wholly absorbed in not spilling the glass of claret punch which he carried in one hand, and not falling down on the slippery floor with the plate of salad which he bore in the other. She had thoughts of feigning unconsciousness; she would have had no scruple in practising this or any other social stratagem, for though she kept a conscience in regard to certain matters—what she considered essentials—she lived a thousand little lies every day, and taught her daughter by precept and example to do the same. You must seem to be looking one way when you were really looking another; you must say this when you meant that; you must act as if you were thinking one thing when you were thinking something quite different; and all to no end, for, as she constantly said, people always know perfectly well what you were about, whichever way you looked or whatever you said, or no matter how well you acted the part of thinking what you did not think. Now, although she seemed not to look, she saw all that has been described at a glance, and at another she saw young Mavering slide easily up to his father and relieve him of the plate and glass, with a laugh as pleasant and a show of teeth as dazzling as he bestowed upon any of the ladies he had passed. She owned to her recondite heart that she liked this in young Mavering, though at the same time she asked herself what motive he really had in being so polite to his father before people. But she had no time to decide; she had only time to pack the question hurriedly away for future consideration, when young Mavering arrived at her elbow, and she turned with a little “Oh!” of surprise so perfectly acted that it gave her the greatest pleasure.
IV.
“I don't think my father would have got here alive with these things,” said young Mavering. “Did you see how I came to his rescue?”
Mrs. Pasmer instantly threw away all pretext of not having seen. “Oh yes! my heart was in my mouth when you bore down upon him, Mr. Mavering. It was a beautiful instance of filial devotion.”
“Well, do sit down now, Mrs. Pasmer, and take it comfortably,” said the young fellow; and he got her one of the many empty chairs, and would not give her the things, which he put in another, till she sat down and let him spread a napkin over her lap.
“Really,” she said, “I feel as if I were stopping all the wheels of Class Day. Am I keeping them from closing the Gymnasium, Mr. Mavering?”
“Not quite,” said the young man, with one of his laughs. “I don't believe they will turn us out, and I'll see that they don't lock us in. Don't hurry, Mrs. Pasmer. I'm only sorry you hadn't something sooner.”
“Oh, your father proposed getting me something a good while ago.”
“Did he? Then I wonder you haven't had it. He's usually on time.”
“You're both very energetic, I think,” said Mrs. Pasmer.
“He's the father of his son,” said the young fellow, assuming the merit with a bow of burlesque modesty.
It went to Mrs. Pasmer's heart. “Let's hope he'll never forget that,” she said, in an enjoyment of the excitement and the salad that was beginning to leave her question of these Maverings a light, diaphanous cloud on the verge of the horizon.
The elder Mavering had been trying, without success, to think of something to say to Miss Pasmer, he had twice cleared his throat for that purpose. But this comedy between his son and the young lady's mother seemed so much lighter and brighter than anything he could have said, that he said nothing, and looked on with his mouth set in its queer smile, while the girl listened with the gravity of a daughter who sees that her mother is losing her head. Mrs. Pasmer buzzed on in her badinage with the young man, and allowed him to go for a cup of coffee before she rose from her chair, and shook out her skirts with an air of pleasant expectation of whatever should come next.
He came back without it. “The coffee urn has dried up here, Mrs. Pasmer. But you can get some at the other spreads; they'd be inconsolable if you didn't take something everywhere.”
They all started toward the door, but the elder Mavering said, holding back a little, “Dan, I think I'll go and see—”
“Oh no, you mustn't, father,” cried the young man, laying his hand with caressing entreaty on his father's coat sleeve. “I don't want you to go anywhere till you've seen Professor Saintsbury. We shall be sure to meet him at some of the spreads. I want you to have that talk with him—” He corrected himself for the instant's deflection from the interests of his guest, and added, “I want you to help me hunt him up for Mrs. Pasmer. Now, Mrs. Pasmer, you're not to think it's the least trouble,
