American literature -- Humor; American wit and humor
"I dare say that somewhere there are parties for our kind," she said,
finally. "Not with silly little chinless boys or popular men who are
always trying to get away, but men who study and care about things--who
go to Greece and dig ruins, for instance, or study sociology, and think
more about one's mind than one's collar-bones."
Dora shook her head. "But they don't go to parties!"
"Both Mr. Morton and Mr. White do, sometimes," Cora suggested. "They
aren't like the rest. I thought that tenement-house work they told us
about was most interesting. But they would call if they wanted to," she
added.
The twins in wrappers, bending over their books, had a certain
comeliness. There was even an austere beauty in their wide, high
foreheads, their fine, straight dark hair, their serious gray eyes and
sensitive mouths, pensive but not without humor and sweetness. But the
twins in evening dress, their unwilling hair flower-crowned and
bolstered into pompadours, their big-boned thinness contrasted with
Amelie's plump curves, their elbows betraying the red disks of serious
application, were quite another matter, and they knew it. The night of
the dance they came down-stairs with solemn, dutiful faces, and lifted
submissive eyes to their mother for judgment. She was looking charmingly
pretty herself, carrying her thick white hair with a humorous boldness,
and her smiling brown eyes were younger than their gray ones.
"Very well, twinnies! Now you look something like human girls," she said
gaily. "Run and have a beautiful time. Ah, Amelie, you little fairy!
They will all be on their knees to you to-night. Where is Enid?"
"Nowhere near dressed, and she won't hurry," Amelie explained. "Oh, I am
so excited, I shall die! What if no one asks me to dance!"
"Silly!" Mrs. Baldwin laughed. "I am only afraid of your dancing
yourself to death. Ah, Mrs. Merritt, how good of you to come with your
dear girls! And Mr. Merritt--this is better than I dared hope."
The rooms filled rapidly. Enid, after one languid waltz, disappeared
with Harry and was not seen again till supper. Amelie flew from partner
to partner, pouring streams of vivacious talk into patient masculine
ears. The twins were dutifully taken out in turn and unfailingly brought
back. Both Mr. White and Mr. Morton came, serious young men who danced
little, and looked on more as if the affair were a problem in sociology
than an entertainment. There were plenty of men, for Mrs. Baldwin's
entertainments had a reputation in the matter of supper, music, and
floors.
"After you've worked through the family, you can have a ripping old
time," Cora heard one youth explain to another; a moment later he stood
in front of her, begging the honor of a waltz. She felt no resentment;
her sympathies were all with him. She looked up with gentle seriousness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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