Miss Anderson, who claimed a collateral Dutch ancestry by the Van Hook, tucked in between her non-committal family name and the Julia given her in christening, was of the ordinary slender make of American girlhood, with dull blond hair, and a dull blond complexion, which would have left her face uninteresting if it had not been for the caprice of her nose in suddenly changing from the ordinary American regularity, after getting over its bridge, and turning out distinctly 'retrousse'. This gave her profile animation and character; you could not expect a girl with that nose to be either irresolute or commonplace, and for good or for ill Miss Anderson was decided and original. She carried her figure, which was no great things of a figure as to height, with vigorous erectness; she walked with long strides, knocking her skirts into fine eddies and tangles as she went; and she spoke in a bold, deep voice, with tones like a man in it, all the more amusing and fascinating because of the perfectly feminine eyes with which she looked at you, and the nervous, feminine gestures which she used while she spoke.
She took Mrs. Pasmer into her confidence with regard to Alice at an early stage of their acquaintance, which from the first had a patronising or rather protecting quality in it; if she owned herself less fine, she knew herself shrewder, and more capable of coping with actualities.
“I think she's moybid, Alice is,” she said. “She isn't moybid in the usual sense of the word, but she expects more of herself and of the woyld generally than anybody's going to get out of it. She thinks she's going to get as much as she gives, and that's a great mistake, Mrs. Pasmer,” she said, with that peculiar liquefaction of the canine letter which the New-Yorkers alone have the trick of, and which it would be tiresome and futile to try to represent throughout her talk.
“Oh yes, I quite agree with you,” said Mrs. Pasmer, deep in her throat, and reserving deeper still her enjoyment of this early wisdom of Miss Anderson's.
“Now, even at church—she carries the same spirit into the church. She doesn't make allowance for human nature, and the church does.”
“Oh, certainly!” Mrs. Pasmer agreed.
“She isn't like a person that's been brought up in the church. It's more like the old Puritan spirit.—Excuse me, Mrs. Pasmer!”
“Yes, indeed! Say anything you like about the Puritans!” said Mrs. Pasmer, delighted that, as a Bostonian, she should be thought to care for them.
“I always forget that you're a Bostonian,” Miss Anderson apologized.
“Oh, thank you!” cried Mrs. Pasmer.
“I'm going to try to make her like other girls,” continued Miss Anderson.
“Do,” said Alice's mother, with the effect of wishing her joy of the undertaking.
“If there were a few young men about, a little over seventeen and a little under fifty, it would be easier,” said Miss Anderson thoughtfully. “But how are you going to make a girl like other girls when there are no young men?”
“That's very true,” said Mrs. Pasmer, with an interest which she of course did her best to make impersonal. “Do you think there will be more, later on?”
“They will have to Huey up if they are comin',” said Miss Anderson. “It's the middle of August now, and the hotel closes the second week in September.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Pasmer, vaguely looking at Alice. She had just appeared over the brow of the precipice, along whose face the arrivals and departures by the ferry-boat at Campobello obliquely ascend and descend.
She came walking swiftly toward the hotel, and, for her, so excitedly that Mrs. Pasmer involuntarily rose and went to meet her at the top of the broad hotel steps.
“What is it, Alice?”
“Oh, nothing! I thought I saw Mr. Munt coming off the boat.”
“Mr. Munt?”
“Yes.” She would not stay for further question.
Her mother looked after her with the edge of her fan over her mouth till she disappeared in the depths of the hotel corridor; then she sat down near the steps, and chatted with some half-grown boys lounging on the balustrade, and waited for Munt to come up over the brink of the precipice. Dan Mavering came with him, running forward with a polite eagerness at sight of Mrs. Pasmer. She distributed a skillful astonishment equally between the two men she had equally expected to see, and was extremely cordial with them, not only because she was pleased with them, but because she was still more pleased with her daughter's being, after all, like other girls, when it came to essentials.
XII.
Alice came down to lunch in a dress which reconciled the seaside and the drawing-room in an effect entirely satisfactory to her mother, and gave her hand to both the gentlemen without the affectation of surprise at seeing either.
“I saw Mr. Munt coning up from the boat,” she said in answer to Mavering's demand for some sort of astonishment from her. “I wasn't certain that it was you.”
Mrs. Pasmer, whose pretences had been all given away by this simple confession, did not resent it, she was so much pleased with her daughter's evident excitement at the young man's having come. Without being conscious of it, perhaps, Alice prettily assumed the part of hostess from the moment of their meeting, and did the honours of the hotel with a tacit implication of knowing that he had come to see her there. They had only met twice, but now, the third time, meeting after a little separation, their manner toward each other was as if their acquaintance had been making progress in the interval. She took him about quite as if he had joined their family party, and introduced him to Miss Anderson and to all her particular friends, for each of whom, within five minutes after his presentation, he contrived to do some winning service. She introduced him to her father, whom he treated with deep respect and said “Sir” to. She showed him the bowling alley, and began to play tennis with him.
Her mother, sitting with John Munt on the piazza, followed these polite attentions to Mavering with humorous satisfaction, which was qualified as they went on.
“Alice,” she said to her, at a chance which offered itself during the evening, and then she hesitated for the right word.
“Well; mamma?” said the girl impatiently, stopping on her way to walk up and down the piazza with Mavering; she had run in to get a wrap and a Tam-o'-Shanter cap.
“Don't—overdo—the honours.”
“What do you mean, mamma?” asked the girl; dropping her arms before her, and letting the shawl trail on the floor.
“Don't you think he was very kind to us on Class Day?”
Her mother laughed. “But every one mayn't know it's gratitude.”
Alice went out, but she came back in a little while, and went up to her room without speaking to any one.
The fits of elation and depression with which this first day passed for her succeeded one another during Mavering's stay. He did not need Alice's chaperonage long. By the next morning he seemed to know and to like everybody in the hotel, where he enjoyed a general favour which at that moment had no exceptions. In the afternoon he began to organise excursions and amusements with the help of Miss Anderson.
The plans all referred to Alice, who accepted and approved with