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It was all very well to play at being old-fashioned for a day; but modern times have their distinct charms and conveniences, and if the girls, on sober second-thought, preferred their own share of the centuries to any other, no one need count them blameworthy. ONE afternoon in August, Candace happened to be alone in the drawing-room with Mrs. Gray when Mrs. Joy was announced.
The sea was intensely blue that afternoon, with shoots of creamy foam over every rock and ledge, and for a while they talked of nothing but the beauty of the day and the view. Finally Mrs. Gray began, "How did you like Mrs. Endicott?" Mrs. Endicott was one of various visitors who had called that morning. Candace had been sent for, and had been more than usually awkward and unresponsive.
Candace looked much mortified. "Was I stiff?" she asked. "I didn't know it. I didn't mean to be." "You are almost always stiff with strangers," said her cousin. "I know you do not mean it, and you are not conscious of the effect of your own manner; but all the same it is stiff. Now, Cannie, will you promise me not to be hurt at what I am going to say?"
"But what a little bit of ground there is about it for such a big house!" said Candace, whose country eyes were often struck by the disproportion between the Newport edifices and the land on which they stood. "Yes; land is so dreadfully dear now that people can't afford large places."
Half a dozen florists exhibited masses of hot-house flowers amid a tangle of palms and tree-ferns; beyond was the announcement of an "opening" by a well-known dressmaker, whose windows were hung with more beautiful things than Candace in her small experience had ever dreamed of before, laces, silks, embroideries.
It was of no use, of course, to tell Candace of all the explanations of this redoubtable passage, of potential presence, and representative presence, and representative identity, and federal headship. She met all with the dogged, "Nebber did it, I knows; should 'ave 'membered, if I had. Don't tell me!"
He beckoned to the smart coachman, who wore a dark green overcoat with big metal buttons, to draw nearer. "Here's your passenger," he said, helping Candace into the carriage. "Good-day, Miss. I hope we'll see you again on the 'Eolus. All right, driver." "Oh, thank you," cried Candace, finding voice and forgetting shyness in her gratitude; "you've been real kind to me, Captain."
I can't, for the life of me, see any beauty in ceilings so low that you bump your head against them, and little scraps of windows filled with greenish glass that you can't see through, and which make you look like a mouldy fright, if any one looks through from the outside." "Miss Gisborne's window-panes are green," admitted Candace.
Rome was not built in a day, and ease of manner is not acquired in a moment; but Candace had at last got hold of a right idea, and there was hope that with time people less charitable even than "perfect angels" might pronounce her "agreeable."
Mary grew rather white, as if she was going to faint; but Jim Marvyn stood up just as firm, and looked as proud and handsome as a prince, and he kind of looked down at her, 'cause, you know, he is a great deal taller, kind of wondering, as if he wanted to know if it was really so. Well, when they got all placed, they let the doors stand open, and Cato and Candace came and stood in the door.
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