That afternoon at six I came again in my best clothes. A reception is after all the simplest of social functions. It entails no obligations, and is as democratic as an electric car. It is perhaps one of the few functions in which even the noblest society may use its elbows, and as a school for staring, the kind that sees through the amplest human body as if it were mere air, nothing could be more useful and practical. It is an interesting study to observe how the female lorgnette is on such occasions so triumphant an impediment to sight.
Well, the whole street proclaimed the coming-out of Nancy. Carriages lined the curbstones and an awning announced the festive nature of the occasion. A band, crowded into a cubby-hole usually sacred to "father's" overcoats and umbrellas, tried vainly to penetrate the talk--there was a dense crush of human beings, and over all there was a mixed aroma of hot air, flowers, and coffee. At the top of the "parlour," before a bank of flowers, and burdened with bouquets, stood Nancy, all in expensive white simplicity, her face radiant, and supported by an utterly exhausted mother. Six young men who served as ushers, in collars tall enough for a giraffe, brought up relays of friends to be introduced to mother and "bud"--all just like a wedding, only the hero was wanting, and for "mother's" sake one did wish the occasion had had a hero. Last year's "buds" were brought up and examined this year's "bud," and there was a great deal of chatter and hand-shaking, of the pump-handle kind, and a pushing past each other of magnificent matrons in the latest things in hats.
I was escorted up by one of the young giraffes, who solemnly introduced me. A mighty different "bud" this from the one of the morning.
"I've got two hundred and forty bouquets," she whispered triumphantly; and just then I caught mother's weary eye and knew as absolutely as one knows anything in this uncertain world that "father" had sent in thirty. Really, there is nothing so loving, so generous and so weak in this wide world as an American father.
I was swept on by a crush of prosperous matrons accompanied by expensively simple daughters--the matrons making obviously disparaging mental criticisms about each other's daughters. For real simple, unassuming jealousy there is nothing like rival mothers! So I was pushed into the dining-room where the chief ornaments were four Gibson girls in party frocks who, at a flower-laden centre-table, in the mellow light of rose-shaded candles, dispensed glances, coffee, smiles, and tea, and other frivolous afternoon refreshments. They had the best of it, these beautiful young things at the table, especially when they could annex an occasional man.