The decorum of the walk could not exclude all of Truesdale's
lithe and swaying ease; he held his head high, and sent his eyes abroad
to right or left with an assurance that some might have felt to be an
impertinence and others an insolence. To Jane he seemed just descended
from some heaven-kissing hill. She sniffed once or twice as he went past.
"I _hope_ I didn't put too much on--I'm sure I didn't. I just sha'n't
worry about it any more."
Bertie Patterson kept step beside him bravely, though she knew that Jane
was looking at her from one side of the house and her aunt Lydia from the
other. She was striving faithfully to be worthy of her environment. To
take the arm of this brilliant young personage on any occasion at all
would have been a test of spirit; how much more so on an occasion so
brilliant and entrancing as this--particularly when the badge upon the
young man's breast connected him so closely with it, and made the
connection patent to all? She fused everything, and filled him with it
and it with him: the mounting tones of violins and trumpets, the
sparkling quincunxes of the girdling balcony-front, the wide band of
fresco which ran in unison with the arches of glittering bulbs above
their heads, the circling and swaying throng--all the sheen and splendor
of a vast and successful city.
"Nice little girl with your brother," said Mrs. Bates.
"A real dear," responded Jane. "She poured tea for Rosy."
"Did she, indeed?" And Mrs.
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