The Custom of the Country | Page 9

head sunk on her breast, as she did when she had one of
her "turns." He looked up abruptly as Undine entered.
"Father--has mother told you? Mrs. Fairford has asked me to dine.
She's Mrs. Paul Marvell's daughter--Mrs. Marvell was a Dagonet--and
they're sweller than anybody; they WON'T KNOW the Driscolls and
Van Degens!"
Mr. Spragg surveyed her with humorous fondness.

"That so? What do they want to know you for, I wonder?" he jeered.
"Can't imagine--unless they think I'll introduce YOU!" she jeered back
in the same key, her arms around his stooping shoulders, her shining
hair against his cheek.
"Well--and are you going to? Have you accepted?" he took up her joke
as she held him pinioned; while Mrs. Spragg, behind them, stirred in
her seat with a little moan.
Undine threw back her head, plunging her eyes in his, and pressing so
close that to his tired elderly sight her face was a mere bright blur.
"I want to awfully," she declared, "but I haven't got a single thing to
wear."
Mrs. Spragg, at this, moaned more audibly. "Undine, I wouldn't ask
father to buy any more clothes right on top of those last bills."
"I ain't on top of those last bills yet--I'm way down under them," Mr.
Spragg interrupted, raising his hands to imprison his daughter's slender
wrists.
"Oh, well--if you want me to look like a scarecrow, and not get asked
again, I've got a dress that'll do PERFECTLY," Undine threatened, in a
tone between banter and vexation.
Mr. Spragg held her away at arm's length, a smile drawing up the loose
wrinkles about his eyes.
"Well, that kind of dress might come in mighty handy on SOME
occasions; so I guess you'd better hold on to it for future use, and go
and select another for this Fairford dinner," he said; and before he
could finish he was in her arms again, and she was smothering his last
word in little cries and kisses.

III
Though she would not for the world have owned it to her parents,
Undine was disappointed in the Fairford dinner.
The house, to begin with, was small and rather shabby. There was no
gilding, no lavish diffusion of light: the room they sat in after dinner,
with its green-shaded lamps making faint pools of brightness, and its
rows of books from floor to ceiling, reminded Undine of the old
circulating library at Apex, before the new marble building was put up.
Then, instead of a gas-log, or a polished grate with electric bulbs
behind ruby glass, there was an old-fashioned wood-fire, like pictures

of "Back to the farm for Christmas"; and when the logs fell forward
Mrs. Pairford or her brother had to jump up to push them in place, and
the ashes scattered over the hearth untidily.
The dinner too was disappointing. Undine was too young to take note
of culinary details, but she had expected to view the company through a
bower of orchids and eat pretty-coloured entrees in ruffled papers.
Instead, there was only a low centre-dish of ferns, and plain roasted and
broiled meat that one could recognize--as if they'd been dyspeptics on a
diet! With all the hints in the Sunday papers, she thought it dull of Mrs.
Fairford not to have picked up something newer; and as the evening
progressed she began to suspect that it wasn't a real "dinner party," and
that they had just asked her in to share what they had when they were
alone.
But a glance about the table convinced her that Mrs. Fairford could not
have meant to treat her other guests so lightly. They were only eight in
number, but one was no less a person than young Mrs. Peter Van
Degen--the one who had been a Dagonet--and the consideration which
this young lady, herself one of the choicest ornaments of the Society
Column, displayed toward the rest of the company, convinced Undine
that they must be more important than they looked. She liked Mrs.
Fairford, a small incisive woman, with a big nose and good teeth
revealed by frequent smiles. In her dowdy black and antiquated
ornaments she was not what Undine would have called "stylish"; but
she had a droll kind way which reminded the girl of her father's manner
when he was not tired or worried about money. One of the other ladies,
having white hair, did not long arrest Undine's attention; and the fourth,
a girl like herself, who was introduced as Miss Harriet Ray, she
dismissed at a glance as plain and wearing a last year's "model."
The men, too, were less striking than she had hoped. She had not
expected much of Mr. Fairford, since married men were intrinsically
uninteresting, and his baldness and grey moustache seemed naturally to
relegate