railroad superintendent? leading physician in a large town?--no, Mr. Munt said Mister," and then to return to her pretty blue eyes, and to centre there in that pseudo-respectful attention under the arch of her neat brows and her soberly crinkled grey-threaded brown hair and her very appropriate bonnet. A bonnet, she said, was much more than half the battle after forty, and it was now quite after forty with Mrs. Pasmer;but she was very well dressed otherwise. Mr. Mavering went on to say, with a deliberation that seemed an element of his unknown dignity, whatever it might be, "A number of the young fellows together can give a much finer spread, and make more of the day, in a place like this, than we used to do in our rooms.""Ah, then you're a Harvard man too!" said Mrs. Primer to herself, with surprise, which she kept to herself, and she said to Mavering: "Oh yes, indeed! It's altogether better. Aren't they nice looking fellows?" she said, putting up her glass to look at the promenaders.
"Yes," Mr. Mavering assented. "I suppose," he added, out of the consciousness of his own relation to the affair--"I suppose you've a son somewhere here?""Oh dear, no!" cried Mrs. Primer, with a mingling, superhuman, but for her of ironical deprecation and derision. "Only a daughter, Mr.
Mavering."
At this feat of Mrs. Pasmer's, Mr. Mavering looked at her with question as to her precise intention, and ended by repeating, hopelessly, "Only a daughter?""Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a sigh of the same irony, "only a poor, despised young girl, Mr. Mavering.""You speak," said Mr. Mavering, beginning to catch on a little, "as if it were a misfortune," and his, dignity broke up into a smile that had its queer fascination.
"Why, isn't it?" asked Mrs. Pasmer.
"Well, I shouldn't have thought so."
"Then you don't believe that all that old-fashioned chivalry and devotion have gone out? You don't think the young men are all spoiled nowadays, and expect the young ladies to offer them attentions?""No," said Mr. Mavering slowly, as if recovering from the shock of the novel ideas. "Do you?""Oh, I'm such a stranger in Boston--I've lived abroad so long--that Idon'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 Iprophesied, 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 Ihear, 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.
