April Hopes | Page 5

to a third person for some
explanation of Munt. But she was not a woman to be troubled much by
this momentary mystification, and she was not embarrassed at all when
Munt said, as if it had all been pre- arranged, "Well, now, Mrs. Pasmer,
if you'll let me leave you with Mr. Mavering a moment, I'll go off and
bring that unnatural child to you; no use dragging you round through
this crowd longer."
He made a gesture intended, in the American manner, to be at once
polite and jocose, and was gone, leaving Mrs. Pasmer a little surprised,
and Mr. Mavering in some misgiving, which he tried to 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 voice, with a caressing manner,
and stood looking up, at Mr. Mavering with one shoulder shrugged and
the other drooped, and a tasteful composition of her fan and hands and
handkerchief at her waist.
"Yes, ma'am, it is," said Mr. Mavering. He seemed to say ma'am to her
with a public or official accent, which sent Mrs. Primer's mind
fluttering forth to poise briefly at such conjectures as, "Congressman
from a country district? judge of the Common Pleas? bank president?
railroad superintendent? leading physician in a large town?-- no, 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 forty with Mrs. Pasmer;
but she was very well dressed otherwise. Mr. Mavering went on to say,
with a deliberation that seemed an element of his unknown dignity,
whatever it might be, "A number of the young fellows together can
give a much finer spread, and make more of the day, in a place like this,
than we used to do in our rooms."
"Ah, then you're a Harvard man too!" said Mrs. Primer to herself, with
surprise, which she kept to herself, and she said to Mavering: "Oh yes,
indeed! It's altogether better. Aren't they nice looking fellows?" she
said, putting up her glass to look at the promenaders.
"Yes," Mr. Mavering assented. "I suppose," he added, out of the
consciousness of his own relation to the affair--"I suppose you've a son
somewhere here?"
"Oh dear, no!" cried Mrs. Primer, with a mingling, superhuman, but for
her of ironical deprecation and derision. "Only a daughter, Mr.
Mavering."
At this feat of Mrs. Pasmer's, Mr. Mavering looked at her with question
as to her precise intention, and ended by repeating, hopelessly, "Only a
daughter?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a sigh of the same irony, "only a poor,
despised young girl, Mr. Mavering."
"You speak," said Mr. Mavering, beginning to catch on a little, "as if it

were a misfortune," and his, dignity broke up into a smile that had its
queer fascination.
"Why, isn't it?" asked Mrs. Pasmer.
"Well, I shouldn't have thought so."
"Then you don't believe that all that old-fashioned chivalry and
devotion have gone out? You don't think the young men are all spoiled
nowadays, and expect the young ladies to offer them attentions?"
"No," said Mr. Mavering slowly, as if recovering from the shock of the
novel ideas. "Do you?"
"Oh, I'm such a stranger in Boston--I've lived abroad so long--that I
don't know. One hears all kinds of things. But I'm so glad you're not
one of those--pessimists!"
"Well," said Mr. Mavering, still thoughtfully, "I don't know that I can
speak by the card exactly. I can't say how it is now. I haven't been at a
Class Day spread since my own Class Day; I haven't even 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 asked to meet
them, and we thought it an honour if the young ladies would let us talk
or dance with them, or take them to picnics. I don't think that any of
them could complain of want of attention."
"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, "that's what I preached, that's what I
prophesied, when I brought my daughter home from Europe. I told her
that a girl's life in America was one long triumph; but they say now that
girls have more attention in London even than in Cambridge. One hears
such dreadful things!"
"Like what?" asked Mr. Mavering, with the unserious interest which
Mrs. Primer made most