In fact, it was beginning to make her face ache a
little.
Mildred came in from the corridor, heavily attended. She carried
a great bouquet of violets laced with lilies of-the-valley; and
the violets were lusty, big purple things, their stems wrapped in
cloth of gold, with silken cords dependent, ending in long
tassels. She and her convoy passed near the two young Adamses;
and it appeared that one of the convoy besought his hostess to
permit "cutting in"; they were "doing it other places" of late,
he urged; but he was denied and told to console himself by
holding the bouquet, at intervals, until his third of the
sixteenth dance should come. Alice looked dubiously at her own
bouquet.
Suddenly she felt that the violets betrayed her; that any one who
looked at them could see how rustic, how innocent of any
florist's craft they were "I can't eat dead violets," Walter
said. The little wild flowers, dying indeed in the warm air,
were drooping in a forlorn mass; and it seemed to her that
whoever noticed them would guess that she had picked them
herself. She decided to get rid of them.
Walter was becoming restive. "Look here!" he said. "Can't you
flag one o' these long-tailed birds to take you on for the next
dance? You came to have a good time; why don't you get busy and
have it? I want to get out and smoke.
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