"What nonsense, Genie!" blushed her sister. "I'm sure you didn't need clothes any more than I did, with all your beautiful hair."

Joan's evil imagination pictured her Cousin Iphigenia frequenting the polite world clad, like the Lady G.o.diva, chiefly in hair, and she chuckled; but at the same time she kissed both ladies impulsively.

This was one of the things that brought her to the dingy house so frequently; the atmosphere of affectionate appreciation that warmed it.

In her father's family--and it was one of the Darcys' undoubted charms--all geese were swans, and they put not only their own but each other's best foot foremost with a touching unanimity. The three sisters regarded each other as paragons, exceeded in degree only by their first cousin Richard, who, in addition to being a Darcy, was likewise a man, and by their first-cousin-once-removed Joan, who in addition to being a Darcy was young. As to their cousin Richard's new wife--the name she had a.s.sumed in marriage banished before birth any qualms they might have felt as to her inborn qualifications for the polite world. A Darcy could naturally do no wrong.

One of the things Joan liked best in Effie May was her consistent kindness to these rather tiresome and unimportant spinsters. "Buying them!" she had thought at first. But after all why should any one trouble to buy them? Hers was not entirely a material kindness, either.

She consulted them faithfully in social matters, even in household matters (though the Misses Darcy were not notable housekeepers). She and the Major and the limousine accompanied them occasionally to church, the only form of social dissipation in which they still indulged. Altogether she exhibited in dealing with them a tact which in anybody else Joan would have attributed to good breeding.

One morning, when the girl stopped in to make her cousins a visit, the opening door revealed an unusual amount of chatter coming down from the floor above; soft, pretty chatter (like her father, the Darcy ladies had charming voices), mingled with the steady hum of a sewing-machine.

"What's up, Susy?" she asked the languid colored slattern who let her in.

"De ladies is gittin' ready fo' de ball, I'specks, Miss Joan, fittin' on dey new dresses."

"New dresses? A ball?" repeated the surprised Joan, who did not connect these activities with her own debut, scheduled to take place a month or so later. "I must investigate!" and ignoring Susy's best efforts to toll her into the parlor, she pursued the chatter to its source.

She avoided that parlor whenever possible, having earlier exhausted its charms. It was a rather dismal chamber, with shutters always closed against a too-revealing sunlight. Innumerable small tables and a double mantel-shelf were crowded with articles of _vertu_ in the shape of hand-painted vases, and ginger-jars, and marble hands. On the walls, concealing as much as possible of the original decoration, hung specimens of all the artistic aspirations of the Darcy family and friends; "Yards of Pansies," still-life studies of a fan in interesting juxtaposition to a coal-scuttle, and the like. Concealment seemed to be the motif of the decoration-scheme. The fireplace was concealed by moribund cat-tails, the former usefulness of a spinning-wheel was concealed by gilt paint, the function of the lamp was concealed, if not permanently impaired, by a ruffled blue silk petticoat reminiscent for the best of reasons of a certain blue silk party-dress that had once done yeoman's service in the family.

The elegance of their parlor enabled Joan's cousins to ask several dollars more a month for their rooms than did any other house in the square; but Joan, who, had inherited from the maternal side a strain of practicality, positively ached in her joints at the thought of the hours it must take to thoroughly sweep and dust it--if indeed it ever were thoroughly swept and dusted.

She poked her head around a door that stood ajar on the third floor: "May I come in?"

The three turned startled faces to greet her, two in dressing-sacks whose fronts bristled with pins, the third in a costume which seemed vaguely familiar, a dress which glittered with jet sequins and was cut so low that it was perhaps fortunate Miss Euphemia had neglected to remove her gray flannel underwear.

"Why, Joan!" they chorused, dismay mingling with their welcome. (Even in conversation they were a most united family, speaking usually all three at once.) "However did you find your way up here? That stupid Susy should have shown you into the drawing-room!--or at least have announced you, so that you would not have caught us like this."

"Nonsense! Susy tried to shoo me into the parlor, but I wouldn't be shooed; and as for 'announcing' me--she did howl up the stairs. But you were too engrossed to hear." The nave respect with which they treated their prosperous young cousin always mortified Joan. She had her own conception of the family dignity. "You'd suppose I'd never seen a dressing-sack or a sewing-machine in my life, whereas I was raised on 'em.--My word, Cousin Euphie, how grand you are!"

"Am I, dear? The dress is grand, I know," said Miss Euphemia doubtfully, "but I'm not sure it's quite in my style. The others thought I'd better have it because I'm plumpest, in the--in the chest, you know. But really, the waist!--There simply isn't any, Joan! What would you suggest?"

"A yoke," said the girl gravely.

"Just what I said!" twittered Miss Iphigenia. "Yokes _are_ being worn, or I'm certain Joan wouldn't have suggested it. A guimpe of black net perhaps--tucked, would you say, Joan dear!--and long wrinkled sleeves of the same. Which would do away with the necessity for long gloves, girls!"

This happy thought was greeted with acclaim. "How clever of you, Genie!

We can _all_ have guimpes and long sleeves? You see, three pairs of long white gloves--" they explained to Joan.

"Of course!" she said hastily, making a mental note to supply her cousins with long white gloves if she had to ask her step-mother for the money.

They showed her the other dresses eagerly; an amber-colored satin--"With slippers to match, my dear!"--and one of old-rose brocade which Miss Virginia almost kissed in her affection for it.

"I sometimes think if I could have had a dress like this earlier--" she murmured. "Though of course my real color, like yours, Joan, was blue. A blue sash, and a pink rose in the hair. As General Fitzhugh Lee once said to me at a Galt House ball--"

"No, wasn't it at the Governor's Inauguration, sister?" interposed Miss Euphemia.

In the gentle altercation which ensued, Joan never heard just what the gallant general had said to her cousin Virginia; but she suspected it of having some connection with blue eyes.

"You're a lucky girl to be presented at a Galt House ball!" they exclaimed presently, returning to the subject in hand. "And Cousin Effie May has really been _too_ sweet about it. Insists, simply insists that we shall all three of us stand up with her in the receiving line! Says she'd be terribly shy without us." (Joan smiled faintly at the picture of Effie May being shy.) "We said to her, 'No, my dear, one of us is _quite_ enough. We'll draw straws for it, as we always used to.' Dear papa never let all three of us go to the same party. As he said, 'It's too much of a good thing!' (Slang, you know.) But she a.s.sured us that she had three evening dresses she couldn't get into,"--it was Miss Euphemia speaking at the moment, quite unaware of any navete in the sequence of her remarks,--"and that it would be a real kindness on our part to take them off her hands. You know, dear, Cousin Effie May really is getting a little stout. And she says it's such a problem to know what to do with outgrown party dresses."

"It certainly is!" agreed Miss Iphigenia, as if it were one that weighed upon her heavily. "You simply can't give things of that sort to the poor."

"Why not?" murmured Joan, "if the poor would enjoy them?"

They all rounded on her. "Why, but dear child, it wouldn't be suitable!

It would give the poor ideas beyond their station. Fancy presenting a spangled net evening-gown to--Susy, say! It would never do!"

"I suppose not, because she would certainly burst with joy. But think,"

mused Joan, "what an enviable death!"

The Darcy ladies looked at her uncertainly. They were never quite sure whether their young cousin was jesting or not. They preferred people to laugh when they joked. It made things clearer.

"Never mind," the girl added hastily. "Susie's not going to get these magnificent costumes, anyway!--and I am so glad you are coming to my ball, dears. We'll be a whole family of debutantes!"

Afterwards she realized soberly how near her pride had come to depriving these innocent ladies of a real pleasure. Pride, she reflected, may be very close kin to selfishness. She postponed her own plans a while longer.

CHAPTER XXIII

These were at their best vague plans. Only one thing was definite about them. They were to include no more make-believe. Whatever came hereafter, Joan intended to be herself. The world must accept her on her own terms; in the phrase of her childhood "like her or lump her!"

The difficulty was to decide just what that self might be. Hitherto it had altered obligingly to suit different situations; blowing now hot, now cold, according to the wind of circ.u.mstance. But surely underneath there was a definite ent.i.ty, which did not chop and change and adapt itself, but remained Joan?

At school she had shown no particular apt.i.tude that would help her now--or rather had shown an apt.i.tude in so many directions as to give rise to a widespread impression that "Joan Darcy would get somewhere some day," but which had caused more than one of her teachers to shake her head and murmur something about Jack of all trades being master of none. She herself had found this facility convenient, not in the pursuit of study but in the avoidance of it. She had managed to slip through the brief period allotted by Richard Darcy for the necessities of a young gentlewoman's education, with the minimum of work combined with the maximum of pleasure. It seemed to her then, and afterwards, the wisest possible use to make of a superior brain. Possibly the mental diet offered for her consideration was not altogether suited to Joan's peculiar requirements.

Certainly she came away from school with little more knowledge than she had taken into it, even with regard to herself. Vague yearnings she was aware of, vague inhibitions and promptings; together with tastes and distastes that were not vague at all. She put the latter down on a bit of paper, in an effort to come to a clearer understanding of the girl who was Joan Darcy.

She liked:

1. Books. On any subject whatever, provided they did not try to teach anything and came up to her rather exacting standards of style.

2. Dancing--if people kept in step with the music and did not hold her too close.

3. Out-of-doors, especially when the wind was blowing.

4. Music, if there was no one around to discuss it or a.n.a.lyse it.

5. Children, without their families.

6. Almost any sort of a dog, particularly if it did not seem to belong to anybody. Strays regarded her as their own.

She disliked (and here there were no qualifications. It was never hard for Joan to say what she disliked!):

1. Debt.

2. Effusiveness.