The battle won't begin till
eleven o'clock."
She rose, and the clamor rose again with her, and her guests crushed
about her, demanding to be allowed at least to go and look at the castle
immediately.
One of the men's voices asked, "May I be one of the defenders, Mrs.
Westangle? I want to be on the winning side, sure."
"Oh, is this going to be a circus chariot-race?" another lamented.
"No, indeed," a girl cried, "it's to be the real thing."
It fell to Verrian, in the assortment of couples in which Mrs.
Westangle's guests sallied out to view the proposed scene of action, to
find himself, not too willingly, at Miss Macroyd's side. In his heart
and in his mind he was defending the amusement which he instantly divined
as no invention of Mrs. Westangle's, and both his heart and his mind
misgave him about this first essay of Miss Shirley in her new enterprise.
It was, as Miss Macroyd had suggested, academic, and at the same time it
had a danger in it of being tomboyish. Golf, tennis, riding, boating,
swimming--all the vigorous sports in which women now excel--were boldly
athletic, and yet you could not feel quite that they were tomboyish. Was
it because the bent of Miss Shirley was so academic that she was periling
upon tomboyishness without knowing it in this primal inspiration of hers?
Inwardly he resented the word academic, although outwardly he had
assented to it when Miss Macroyd proposed it.
Pages:
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72