Modern Chronicle, a — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 633 pages of information about Modern Chronicle, a — Complete.

Modern Chronicle, a — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 633 pages of information about Modern Chronicle, a — Complete.

Mrs. Hanbury laid her hand impulsively on Aunt Mary’s.

“No child I know of dresses half as well,” said Mrs. Hanbury.  “The trouble you take—­”

“Is rewarded,” said Aunt Mary.

“Yes,” Mrs. Hanbury agreed.  “If my own daughters were half as good looking, I should be content.  And Honora has an air of race.  Oh, Mary, can’t you see?  I am only thinking of the child’s future.”

“Do you expect me to take down all my mirrors, Eleanor?  If she has good looks,” said Aunt Mary, “she has not learned it from my lips.”

It was true:  Even Aunt Mary’s enemies, and she had some, could not accuse her of the weakness of flattery.  So Mrs. Hanbury smiled, and dropped the subject.

CHAPTER IV

OF TEMPERAMENT

We have the word of Mr. Cyrus Meeker that Honora did not have to learn to dance.  The art came to her naturally.  Of Mr. Cyrus Meeker, whose mustaches, at the age of five and sixty, are waxed as tight as ever, and whose little legs to-day are as nimble as of yore.  He has a memory like Mr. Gladstone’s, and can give you a social history of the city that is well worth your time and attention.  He will tell you how, for instance, he was kicked by the august feet of Mr. George Hanbury on the occasion of his first lesson to that distinguished young gentleman; and how, although Mr. Meeker’s shins were sore, he pleaded nobly for Mr. George, who was sent home in the carriage by himself,—­a punishment, by the way, which Mr. George desired above all things.

This celebrated incident occurred in the new ballroom at the top of the new house of young Mrs. Hayden, where the meetings of the dancing class were held weekly.  Today the soot, like the ashes of Vesuvius, spouting from ten thousand soft-coal craters, has buried that house and the whole district fathoms deep in social obscurity.  And beautiful Mrs. Hayden what has become of her?  And Lucy Hayden, that doll-like darling of the gods?

All this belongs, however, to another history, which may some day be written.  This one is Honora’s, and must be got on with, for it is to be a chronicle of lightning changes.  Happy we if we can follow Honora, and we must be prepared to make many friends and drop them in the process.

Shortly after Mrs. Hayden had built that palatial house (which had a high fence around its grounds and a driveway leading to a porte-cochere) and had given her initial ball, the dancing class began.  It was on a blue afternoon in late November that Aunt Mary and Honora, with Cousin Eleanor and the two girls, and George sulking in a corner of the carriage, were driven through the gates behind Bias and the fat horses of the Hanburys.

Honora has a vivid remembrance of the impression the house made on her, with its polished floors and spacious rooms filled with a new and mysterious and altogether inspiring fashion of things.  Mrs. Hayden represented the outposts in the days of Richardson and Davenport—­had Honora but known it.  This great house was all so different from anything she (and many others in the city) had ever seen.  And she stood gazing into the drawing room, with its curtains and decorously drawn shades, in a rapture which her aunt and cousins were far from guessing.

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Modern Chronicle, a — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.