Bates looked at her harder to avoid seeing
the passage of Gilbert Belden and his wife.
"There's another real dear," she said, presently, "if I can only catch
his eye." She held up her finger to a young man who had just conducted
Rosamund back to her aunt Lydia's box. Rosy had quite scorned the
antiquated usage of the balls of an earlier and less sophisticated day.
"Of _course_ I shall not go with any young man; I shall go with a
chaperon, and if the young men wish to see me they may see me there. It's
all right if Jane wants to go with Theodore Brower; they might do
anything after the way they bang around together in the street-cars. And
I sha'n't go even with a chaperon unless she is in a box, where I can be
taken afterwards"--a declaration which led to financial negotiations
between David Marshall and his sister-in-law, and which brought him to a
still higher appreciation of the general preciousness of his youngest
daughter.
"There! he's coming--my boy Billy. Isn't he about right?"
A tall, broad-shouldered young man of twenty-five was making his way
across the floor, and presently passed through the exit in the midst of
the lower boxes to gain the level of the upper ones.
"College all over, isn't he?" commented Jane; "his shoulders, and the way
he parts his hair."
"The best boy in the world," said Mrs. Bates, plumply, "He has been with
his father for the last four years, and he's come to be a real help to
him.
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