"Then one girl was just going out with her bodice all gaping open, and Carolina stepped up to her as sweetly as if she had been received with perfect politeness and asked if she mightn’t fasten it. The hooks were half off, so Carolina took a paper of pins and fairly pinned that girl into her clothes,--her waist and skirt didn’t meet. She accepted all this help, thanked her, and went out, leaving us all alone. Then our boys came and took us down to the ballroom, and, if you will believe it, mother, not a girl came near us or asked to be introduced or introduced a single boy! Not even the girl that Carolina had helped. I looked at Carolina to see if she noticed it, but her face was as calm as it always is. Her colour, however, was a little less than usual at first.
"We noticed that things sort of dragged at first, and soon we found out what it was. An English yacht was in the river, and its owner, Sir Hubert Wemyss, a young man only about thirty, was expected, and all the girls were trying to save dances for him, and all the boys were trying to get the choice ones.
"The first dance I didn’t watch Carolina, because I had heard that Jim Little was a good dancer, but, after it was over, I saw him take her to the door and she went up to the dressing-room. I made John stop near him, and I asked him what was the matter. ’Oh, I stuck my foot through the lace of her dress, and she’s gone to be sewed up. Say, Miss Peachie, that girl can’t dance! I never saw a Yankee that could!’
"Well, mother, I could scarcely believe my ears! The conceit of that raw Southern boy, who never had been outside of his own little town in the whole of his life, except to go duck-shooting in the swamps, to presume to criticize Carolina’s dancing!"
Aunt Angie’s cheeks were as red as any girl’s. She sat bolt upright in the borrowed carriage, in her cheap print dress and cotton gloves, looking like an empress. The proudest blood in South Carolina flowed in her veins and she had the spirit of her State.
"I said, ’Are you sure, Mr. Little, that the fault was all hers?’ And he laughed and said, ’Well, the Savannah girls never find fault with my dancing, Miss Peachie!’ ’Oh,’ I said, ’if such criterions have stamped their approval on you, Mr. Little, of course there is no more to be said!’ He didn’t see the sarcasm at all,--he seems a trifle dense. So we waited for Carolina, and when she came back, I saw that her dress was ruined, but she had managed to hide it pretty well, and her manner was just as sweet to that man as if he had been fanning her, and we all four went back to Cousin Lois.