The mother and the girls went on wildly planning Dan's future for him. It was all in a strain of extravagant burlesque. But he could not take his part in it with his usual zest. He laughed and joked too, but at the bottom of his heart was an uneasy remembrance of the different future he had talked over with Mrs. Pasmer so confidently. But he said to himself buoyantly at last that it would come out all right. His mother would give in, or else Alice could reconcile her mother to whatever seemed really best.
He parted from his mother with fond gaiety. His sisters came out of the room with him.
"I'm perfectly sore with laughing," said Minnie. "It seems like old times--doesn't it, Dan?--such a gale with mother."XXXI.
An engagement must always be a little incredible at first to the families of the betrothed, and especially to the family of the young man; in the girl's, the mother, at least, will have a more realising sense of the situation. If there are elder sisters who have been accustomed to regard their brother as very young, he will seem all the younger because in such a matter he has treated himself as if he were a man; and Eunice Mavering said, after seeing the Pasmers, "Well, Dan, it's all well enough, Isuppose, but it seems too ridiculous."
"What's ridiculous about it, I should like to know?" he demanded.
"Oh, I don't know. Who'll look after you when you're married? Oh, Iforgot Ma'am Pasmer!"
"I guess we shall be able to look after ourselves," said Dan; a little sulkily.
"Yes, if you'll be allowed to," insinuated his sister.
They spoke at the end of a talk in which he had fretted at the reticence of both his sister and his father concerning the Pasmers, whom they had just been to see. He was vexed with his father, because he felt that he had been influenced by Eunice, and had somehow gone back on him. He was vexed and he was grieved because his father had left them at the door of the hotel without saying anything in praise of Alice, beyond the generalities that would not carry favour with Eunice; and he was depressed with a certain sense of Alice's father and mother, which seemed to have imparted itself to him from the others, and to be the Mavering opinion of them. He could no longer see Mrs. Pasmer harmless if trivial, and good-hearted if inveterately scheming; he could not see the dignity and refinement which he had believed in Mr. Pasmer; they had both suffered a sort of shrinkage or collapse, from which he could not rehabilitate them.
But this would have been nothing if his sister's and his father's eyes, through which he seemed to have been looking, had not shown him Alice in a light in which she appeared strange and queer almost to eccentricity. He was hurt at this effect from their want of sympathy, his pride was touched, and he said to himself that he should not fish for Eunice's praise; but he found himself saying, without surprise, "I suppose you will do what you can to prejudice mother and Min.""Isn't that a little previous?" asked Eunice. "Have I said anything against Miss Pasmer?""You haven't because you couldn't," said Dan, with foolish bitterness.
"Oh, I don't know about that. She's a human being, I suppose--at least that was the impression I got from her parentage.""What have you got to say against her parents?" demanded Dan savagely.
"Oh, nothing. I didn't come down to Boston to denounce the Pasmer family.""I suppose you didn't like their being in a flat; you'd have liked to find them in a house on Commonwealth Avenue or Beacon Street.""I'll own I'm a snob," said Eunice, with maddening meekness. "So's father.""They are connected with the best families in the city, and they are in the best society. They do what they please, and they live where they like. They have been so long in Europe that they don't care for those silly distinctions. But what you say doesn't harm them. It's simply disgraceful to you; that's all," said Dan furiously.
"I'm glad it's no worse, Dan," said his sister, with a tranquil smile.
"And if you'll stop prancing up and down the room, and take a seat, and behave yourself in a Christian manner, I'll talk with you; and if you don't, I won't. Do you suppose I'm going to be bullied into liking them?""You can like them or not, as you please," said Dan sullenly; but he sat down, and waited decently for his sister to speak. "But you can't abuse them--at least in my presence.""I didn't know men lost their heads as well as their hearts," said Eunice.
"Perhaps it's only an exchange, though, and it's Miss Pasmer's head." Dan started, but did not say anything, and Eunice smoothly continued: "No, Idon't believe it is. She looked like a sensible girl, and she talked sensibly. I should think she had a very good head. She has good manners, and she's extremely pretty, and very graceful. I'm surprised she should be in love with such a simpleton.""Oh, go on! Abuse me as much as you like," said Dan. He was at once soothed by her praise of Alice.
