But the dress was perfection compared with the poor girl's manner. She gayly and unblushingly appropriated Erskine to herself and rallied her brother on the situation.
"Poor Jim! you haven't any girl at all, have you? Since Miss Warder--must I call you 'Miss Warder'? it sounds ever so much more friendly and cosey to say 'Alice.' You must look after your cousin, I suppose. Are you sure he is your cousin? You know that is a dodge girls have when--Oh, well, never mind; I won't bother you. This is good for Jim; he always has half a dozen strings to his bow and can never decide which one of them he wants the most; so this will be excellent discipline for him, leaving him out in the cold. Dear me! What am I talking about? Here is Mrs. Burnham looking young enough this minute to be one of us."
All this, while they were making their way through the boarding-house halls and large dining-room to a cosey little alcove, where a table had been set for the Burnhams and their guests. Erskine's face had flushed deeply during the outburst, and he had darted an annoyed look at his mother to see if she was hearing it. He led the way across the dining-room much to the irrepressible Mamie's disappointment, though she chose to seem to ridicule it.
"Dear me!" she said in a stage whisper to Alice, "do look at that ridiculous boy walking off alone. Where I come from, the fellows take the girls out to supper. Can't I borrow your cousin for this evening, and get even with him?"
Mrs. Burnham felt the color rising in her face, but Alice was gracious and lovely. She laughed pleasantly as though used to such jokes, linked her arm in the girl's, and said merrily:--
"We will give them all the slip, my dear, and go in together."
[Illustration: "WE WILL GIVE THEM ALL THE SLIP, MY DEAR."--_Page 61._]
Throughout that embarrassing and long-drawn-out dinner Alice was a help and comfort at least to her hostess, and did steadily and patiently what she could to cover the blunders of the girl beside her. Utterly unaccustomed to even the formalities of a fashionable boarding-house table, Mamie made constant blunders with forks and spoons and other instruments of torture for the uninitiated; but these were trifles compared with the blunders of her tongue. She made evident attempts to cover her ignorance with regard to table formalities by much gay talk. She laughed incessantly, and told many jokes at her brother's expense. She said: "him and me," and "her and I," and "you folks," and a dozen other provincialisms. When they returned to Mrs. Burnham's parlor, it was almost worse--for then Mamie sang; and it was hard for her hostess to determine of which she was most ashamed, the bad taste of the girl's selections or the less than mediocre execution.
