Bildungsromans; Boys -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Middle West -- Fiction
Earth, assisted by Fanchon, was furnishing this sight at Penrod's party.
By the time ice-cream and cake arrived, about half the guests had
either been initiated into the mysteries by Fanchon or were learning
by imitation, and the education of the other half was resumed with the
dancing, when the attendant ladies, unconscious of what was happening,
withdrew into the house for tea.
“That orchestra's a dead one,” Fanchon remarked to Penrod. “We ought to
liven them up a little!”
She approached the musicians.
“Don't you know,” she asked the leader, “the Slingo Sligo Slide?”
The leader giggled, nodded, rapped with his bow upon his violin; and
Penrod, following Fanchon back upon the dancing floor, blindly brushed
with his elbow a solitary little figure standing aloof on the lawn at
the edge of the platform.
It was Marjorie.
In no mood to approve of anything introduced by Fanchon, she had
scornfully refused, from the first, to dance the new “step,” and,
because of its bonfire popularity, found herself neglected in a society
where she had reigned as beauty and belle. Faithless Penrod, dazed by
the sweeping Fanchon, had utterly forgotten the amber curls; he had not
once asked Marjorie to dance. All afternoon the light of indignation had
been growing brighter in her eyes, though Maurice Levy's defection
to the lady from New York had not fanned this flame. From the moment
Fanchon had whispered familiarly in Penrod's ear, and Penrod had
blushed, Marjorie had been occupied exclusively with resentment against
that guilty pair. It seemed to her that Penrod had no right to allow a
strange girl to whisper in his ear; that his blushing, when the strange
girl did it, was atrocious; and that the strange girl, herself, ought to
be arrested.
Forgotten by the merrymakers, Marjorie stood alone upon the lawn,
clenching her small fists, watching the new dance at its high tide,
and hating it with a hatred that made every inch of her tremble. And,
perhaps because jealousy is a great awakener of the virtues, she had
a perception of something in it worse than lack of dignity--something
vaguely but outrageously reprehensible. Finally, when Penrod brushed by
her, touched her with his elbow, and, did not even see her, Marjorie's
state of mind (not unmingled with emotion!) became dangerous. In fact, a
trained nurse, chancing to observe her at this juncture, would probably
have advised that she be taken home and put to bed. Marjorie was on the
verge of hysterics.
She saw Fanchon and Penrod assume the double embrace required by the
dance; the “Slingo Sligo Slide” burst from the orchestra like the
lunatic shriek of a gin-maddened nigger; and all the little couples
began to bob and dip and sway.
Marjorie made a scene. She sprang upon the platform and stamped her
foot.
“Penrod Schofield!” she shouted. “You BEHAVE yourself!”
The remarkable girl took Penrod by the ear. By his ear she swung him
away from Fanchon and faced him toward the lawn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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