April Hopes

e which his stature, gave him over most people there. Hundreds of these were pretty girls, in a great variety of charming costumes

the party-coloured turmoil of the floor, where from time to time the younger promenaders broke away from the ranks into a waltz, and after some turns drifted back, smiling and controlling their quick breath, and resumed their promenade. The place was intensely light, in the candour of a summer day which had no reserves; and the brilliancy was not broken by the simple decorations. Ropes of wild laurel twisted up the pine posts of the aisles, and swung in festoons overhead; masses of t

o that time of life when an introduction; unless charged with some special interest, only adds the pain of doubt to the wearisome encounter of unfamiliar people; and he had unconsciously put on the severity of a man who finds h

s of people meeting after a long time. Mr. Mavering spoke in it voice soft yet firm, and with a certain thickness of tongue; which gave a boyish charm to his slow, utterance, and Mr. Munt used the sort of bronchial snuffle sometime

rs. Pasmer, Mr. Mavering," and the latter made a bow that creased hi

His coat hung carelessly open; the Panama hat in his hand suggested a certain habitual informality of dress, but his smoothly shaven large

for twenty years, or, at any rate, not since '59. She listened while they disputed about the exact date, and looked from time to time at Mr. Munt, as if for some explanation of Mr. Mavering; but Munt himself, when she saw him last, had only just begun to commend himself to society, which had since so fully accepted him, and she had so suddenly, the moment before, found her self hand in glove with him that she mig

overcome pressing his jaws together two or three times without speaking. She had no trouble in getting in the first remark. "Isn't all this charming, Mr. Mavering?" She spoke in a deep low voic

, 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

e kept to herself, and she said to Mavering: "Oh yes, indeed! It's altogether better. Are

d, out of the consciousness of his own relation to

g, superhuman, but for her of ironical deprecati

at her with question as to her precise intention, a

h of the same irony, "only a poor,

a little, "as if it were a misfortune," and his, digni

it?" asked

uldn't have

evotion have gone out? You don't think the young men are all spoil

as if recovering from the shoc

o long-that I don't know. One hears all kinds of thing

ven 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

ter home from Europe. I told her that a girl's life in America was one long triumph; but they say n

the unserious interest which Mrs. Pr

e 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 s

single idea out of several which she had presented, "that the

e a little cry.

llege our superiority

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

than she would have approved of in another. The result was

s wicked generation. But I presume that unnatural supremacy

hed, "and we can always take care of ourselves, and something more. They say," she a

I should be tempted to box my boy's ears if I

is 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

ot kno

such dreadful things. What do you say

, impatient for the dreadf

t winter just after a lot of pretty girls had came out, and m

e B

think that's a strange state of things for America? But I can't believe all those things," said

on of Mrs. Pasmer's awful instances. "Yes!" he added, in final self-possession. "The y

ose pretty girls do seem to

ed and rejected appearance that

thing that people say to you." She abandoned the ground she had just been taking without apparent shame for her

y, "the young married women have held another meeti

d Mrs. Pasmer, laughing evasively. "But I suppose

nave toward them, and he was reminded to ask Mrs. Pasmer, "Will you have something to eat?" He had himself ha

asmer. "I ought to say, 'An ice, p

appetite. "Sit down here," he added, and he caught a vacant chair toward her. When he turned about from doing so, he conf