Part 21

“Why, Mrs. March said that Mr. Kendricks would be sure to know numbers of people, and I must get you other partners, for it wouldn’t do for you to dance the whole evening together.”

She threw herself back in the chair she had taken, and laughed as if this were the best joke in the world.

He said hardily, “You see it has done.”

“And if it wouldn’t do,” she gasped, “why didn’t you bring me the other partners?”

“Because I didn’t know any,” I said; and this seemed to amuse them both so much that I was afraid they would never get their breath.

She looked by and by at her dancing-card, and as soon as she could wipe the tears from her eyes she said, “No; there is no other name there”; and this seemed even a better joke than the other from the way they joined in laughing at it.

“Well, now,” I said, when they were quiet again, “this won’t do, my young friends. It’s all very well for you, and you seem to like it; but I am responsible for your having passed a proper evening under my chaperonage, and something has got to be done to prove it.” They saw the reasonableness of this, and they immediately became sober. “Kendricks,” I asked, “can’t you think of something?”

No, he said, he couldn’t; and then he began to laugh again.

I applied to her in the same terms; but she only answered, “Oh, don’t ask me,” and she went off laughing too.

“Very well, then,” I said; “I shall have to do something desperate, and I shall expect you both to bear me out in it, and I don’t want any miserable subterfuges when it comes to the point with Mrs. March. Will you let me have your dancing-card Miss Gage?” She detached it, and handed it to me. “It’s very fortunate that Mr. Kendricks wrote his name for the first dance only, and didn’t go on and fill it up.”

“Why, we didn’t think it was worth while!” she innocently explained.

“And that’s what makes it so perfectly providential, as Mrs. March says. Now then,” I went on, as I wrote in the name of a rising young politician, who happened just then to have been announced as arriving in Saratoga to join some other leaders in arranging the slate of his party for the convention to meet a month later, “we will begin with a good American.”

I handed the card to Kendricks. “Do you happen to remember the name of the young French nobleman who danced the third dance with Miss Gage?”

“No,” he said; “but I think I could invent it.” And he dashed down an extremely probable marquis, while Miss Gage clapped her hands for joy.

“Oh, how glorious! how splendid!”

I asked, “Will you ever give me away the longest day you live?”

“Never,” she promised; and I added the name of a South American doctor, one of those doctors who seem to be always becoming the presidents of their republics, and ordering all their patients of opposite politics to be shot in the plaza.

Kendricks entered a younger son of an English duke, and I contributed the hyphenated surname of a New York swell, and between us we soon had all the dances on Miss Gage’s card taken by the most distinguished people. We really studied probability in the forgery, and we were proud of the air of reality it wore in the carefully differenced handwritings, with national traits nicely accented in each.

XVI

THE fun of it all was that Mrs. March was not deceived for an instant. “Oh, nonsense!” she said, when she glanced at our pretty deception, which we presented with perhaps too perfect seriousness. “Then you danced only the first dance?”

“No, no!” Miss Gage protested. “I danced every dance as long as I stayed.” She laughed with her handkerchief to her mouth and her eyes shining above.

“Yes; I can testify to that, Mrs. March,” said Kendricks, and he laughed wildly, too. I must say their laughter throughout was far beyond the mirthfulness of the facts. They both protested that they had had the best time in the world, and the gayest time; that I had been a mirror of chaperons, and followed them round with my eyes wherever they went like a family portrait; and that they were the most exemplary young couple at the hop in their behaviour. Mrs. March asked them all about it, and she joined in their fun with a hilarity which I knew from long experience boded me no good.

When Kendricks had gone away, and Miss Gage had left us for the night with an embrace, whose fondness I wondered at, from Mrs. March, an awful silence fell upon us in the deserted parlour where she had waited up.

I knew that when she broke the silence she would begin with, “Well, my dear!” and this was what she did. She added, “I hope you’re convinced now!”

I did not even pretend not to understand. “You mean that they are in love? I suppose that their we-ing and us-ing so much would indicate something of the kind.”

“It isn’t that alone; everything indicates it. She would hardly let go of him with her eyes. I wish,” sighed Mrs. March, and she let her head droop upon her hand a moment, “I could be as sure of him as I am of her.”

“Wouldn’t that double the difficulty?” I ventured to suggest, though till she spoke I had not doubted that it was the case.

“I should make you speak to him if I were sure of him; but as it is I shall speak to her, and the sooner the better.”