red but with harder
puffs. "What she wants," said he at last, "is society. A good nice
dancing-party, now?"

Jamie shook his head. "We've no acquaintance among gay people."

"Gay people?" Hughson elevated his brow. The phrase, with him, was
synonymous with impropriety. "No; but there's my training-company
ball, now; it's given in Union Street hall; gentlemen a dollar, ladies
fifty cents. Each gentleman can bring two ladies. Why not let me take
her there?"

"I'm sure it's very kind of you, John," said Jamie. He felt a pang
that he, too, could not take Mercedes to balls.

"It's not like one o' them Tremont Street balls, you know," said
Hughson proudly. Secretly he thought it a very fine affair. The
governor was to be there, and his aides-de-camp, in gold lace.

Mercedes went to the ball when the night came, but only stayed an
hour. She knew very few of the other girls. Her dress was a yellow
muslin, modestly open at the throat, and she could see them eying it.
None of the other women wore low-necked gowns, but they wore more
pretentious dresses, with more of ornament, and Mercedes felt they did
not even know in how much better taste was she. But John Hughson was
in a most impossible blue swallow-tail with brass buttons,--the sort
of thing, indeed, that Webster had worn a few years before, only
Hughson was not fitted for it. She suspected he had hired it for the
evening, in the hope of pleasing her, for she saw that he had to bear
some chaff about it from his friends. One of the colonels of the
staff, with plumed hat and a sword, came and was introduced to her. In
a sense she made a conquest of him, for he tried clumsily to pay his
court to her, but not seriously. Nothing that yet had happened in her
little life had enraged Miss Mercedes as did this. She inly vowed that
some day she would remember the man, to cut him. And so she had
Hughson take her home.

Poor Hughson felt that his evening had been a failure, and rashly
ventured on some chances of rebuff from her as the two walked
home,--chances of which Miss Mercedes was cruel enough to avail
herself to the full. The honest fellow was puzzled by it, for even he
knew that Mercedes' only desire in going to the ball was to be
admired, and admiration she had had. John was too simple to make fine
discriminations in male deference, but he judged more rightly the
feminine opinion of her looks and manners than did Miss Mercedes
herself. They had thought her too fine for