for the first time she had the shock of finding herself without
an applicant for one of her dances. When she was sixteen "all
the nice boys in town," as her mother said, crowded the Adamses'
small veranda and steps, or sat near by, cross-legged on the
lawn, on summer evenings; and at eighteen she had replaced the
boys with "the older men." By this time most of "the other
girls," her contemporaries, were away at school or college, and
when they came home to stay, they "came out"--that feeble revival
of an ancient custom offering the maiden to the ceremonial
inspection of the tribe. Alice neither went away nor "came out,"
and, in contrast with those who did, she may have seemed to lack
freshness of lustre--jewels are richest when revealed all new in
a white velvet box. And Alice may have been too eager to secure
new retainers, too kind in her efforts to keep the old ones. She
had been a belle too soon.



CHAPTER VIII

The device of the absentee partner has the defect that it cannot
be employed for longer than ten or fifteen minutes at a time, and
it may not be repeated more than twice in one evening: a single
repetition, indeed, is weak, and may prove a betrayal. Alice
knew that her present performance could be effective during only
this interval between dances; and though her eyes were guarded,
she anxiously counted over the partnerless young men who lounged
together in the doorways within her view. Every one of them
ought to have asked her for dances, she thought, and although she
might have been put to it to give a reason why any of them