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The Brownings were a beloved and revered institution; very few new faces appeared there from year to year, except the very choice of the annual crop of debutantes. Little Mrs.
Ellen and Grace, as the family debutantes, were inside with the company, but Carrie and Min, the married daughters, were here, with old Mrs. Crowley, who never missed an occasion of this kind, Mrs. Mulkey's daughter Annie Tate, Gertie Hansen, and an excited fringe of children too young to dance and too old to be sent off to bed.
Balls? Yes, with dress de rigueur, many beautiful women in wonderful toilets, a few debutantes, a scarcity of young men, and a delicious band much better music than at the White Sulphur. And yet no society. But a wonderful agglomeration, the artist was saying. It is a robust sort of place. If Newport is the queen of the watering-places, this is the king.
"You haven't discoursed upon art, literature, and science yet, and you can't go until you've adjusted the affairs of the nation for the next twenty-four hours." "Art?" yawned Fleetwood. "Oh, pictures? Don't like 'em. Nobody ever looks at 'em except débutantes, who do it out of deviltry, to floor a man at a dinner or a dance." "How about literature?" inquired Siward gravely. "Anything doing?"
At first only the most brilliant matches were planned for Harriet; these one by one unaccountably came to naught. Later the mother began to fall back: upon those young men who should be glad to embrace such an opportunity; but these less desirable young men failed to take that peculiar view of their destinies. In the meanwhile the Misses Conyers had come on as debutantes and were soon bespoken.
The room above the dining-room was one of those pink-and-white jumbles that convention prescribes for debutantes. Garlands of pink roses festooned the paper, tied at intervals by enormous pink bows. Pink bows and ruffles smothered the dresser and sewing table, and pink and white cushions filled the window seat.
She swung around toward him, confused and exasperated; but no seriousness was proof against the delighted malice in Dysart's face; and she laughed a little, and laughed again when he did. And she thought that he was, perhaps, the handsomest man she had ever seen. All débutantes did.
Peter Piper, the youngest rare-book collector in the country, who, if left to himself, would have gravitated naturally toward French and a devastating conversation in monosyllables on the pretty failings of prominent débutantes, is gradually warming Clark Stovall, the youngest star of the Provincetown Players out of a prickly silence, employed in supercilious blinks at all the large pictures of celebrated Harlequins by discreet, intelligent questions as to the probable future of Eugene O'Neill.
This done, the entertainers and their friends have but to appear at the stated hour and play their respective rôles with care-free grace. These dinners may be given by a bachelor, to a mixed company, or to a bevy of the débutantes, with the co-operation of a society matron or a married couple to chaperone the affair.
Gentlemen and ladies who never before cared much for "drinking" have now given up almost all other amusements in favor of this fascinating sport; young men and debutantes have become, in the last few years, fully as expert in the game as their parents.
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