Page:Greatest Short Stories (1915).djvu/248

Rh own valentine, but, despite its originality, that document gave him no such comfort as Billy got from twenty-five cents’ worth of embossed paper, pink cupids, and doggerel.

Finally Billy announced to me that he had been to play with Jimmy and got introduced to his girl.

Shortly after this Lu gave what they call “a little company”—not a party, but a reunion of forty or fifty people with whom the family were well acquainted, several of them living in our immediate neighborhood. There was a goodly proportion of young fold and there was to be dancing; but the music was limited to a single piano played by the German exile usual on such occasions, and the refreshments did not rise to the splendor of a costly supper. This kind of compromise with fashionable gayety was wisely deemed by Lu the best method of introducing Daniel to the beau monde—a push given the timid eaglet by the maternal bird, with a soft tree-top between him and the vast expanse of society. How simple was the entertainment may be inferred from the fact that Lu felt somewhat discomposed when she got a note from one of her guests asking leave to bring along her niece who was making her a few weeks’ visit. As a matter of course, however, she returned answer to bring the young lady and welcome.

Daniel’s dressing-room having been given up to the gentlemen, I invited him to make his toilet 245