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 gathered on his forehead. He had a vein that showed prominently down its centre, and large, mobile, girlish blue eyes under good brows, an arched nose, and rather a long face and narrow chin. He had beautiful white teeth; as he laughed these were seen set in a jaw that contracted very much toward the front. He was tall and slim, and he wore with elegance the evening dress which Class Day custom prescribes for the Seniors; in his button-hole he had a club button.
“I shall not have to ask an introduction to Mr. Mavering; and you've robbed me of the pleasure of giving him one to you, Mrs. Pasmer,” he said.
She heard the young man in the course of a swift review of what she had said to his father, and with a formless resentment of the father's not having told her he had a son there; but she answered with the flattering sympathy she had the use of, “Oh, but you won't miss one pleasure out of so many to-day, Mr. Mavering; and think of the little dramatic surprise!”
“Oh, perfect,” he said, with another laugh. “I told Miss Pasmer as we came up.”
“Oh, then you were in the surprise, Alice!” said Mrs. Pasmer, searching her daughter's eyes for confession or denial of this little community of interest. The girl smiled slightly upon the young man, but not disapprovingly, and made no other answer to her mother, who went on: “Where in the world have you been? Did Mr. Munt find you? Who told you where I was? Did you see me? How did you know I was here? Was there ever anything so droll?” She did not mean her questions to be answered, or at least not then; for, while her daughter continued to smile rather more absently, and young Mavering broke out continuously in his nervous laugh, and his father stood regarding him with visible satisfaction, she hummed on, turning to the young man: “But I'm quite appalled at Alice's having monopolised even for a few minutes a whole Senior—and probably an official Senior at that,” she said, with a glance at the pink and white club button in his coat lapel, “and I can't let you stay another instant, Mr. Mavering. I know very well how many demands you have upon you and you must go back directly to your sisters and your cousins and your aunts, and all the rest of them; you must indeed.”
“Oh no! Don't drive me away, Mrs. Pasmer,” pleaded the young man, laughing violently, and then wiping his face. “I assure you that I've no encumbrances of any kind here except my father, and he seems to have been taking very good care of himself.” They all laughed at this, and the young fellow hurried on: “Don't be alarmed at my button; it only