Mrs. Taylor, with her backwoods' conceit and large patronizing manner, had been especially amusing to Hughie, but now in this uncomfortable situation she looked like a haven in a storm as he saw her towering by nearly half a head above the tallest in the crowd.
It was Mrs. Taylor's proud boast that she came of a race of giants. Even upon ordinary occasions she bore a rather remarkable resemblance to a mountain sheep, but to-night the likeness was further increased by a grizzled bunch of frizzled hair that stood out on either temple like embryo horns. Mrs. Taylor looked, as it were, "in the velvet." She wore a brown sateen basque secured at the throat by a brooch consisting of a lock of hair under glass. It was observed, also, that for the evening she had removed the string which she commonly wore around her two large and widely separated front teeth, and which were being drawn together by this means at about the rate the earth is cooling off.
Mrs. Taylor dated events from the time "Mr. Taylor was taken," though there was always room for doubt as to whether Mr. Taylor was "taken" or quite deliberately went.
Miss Maggie was tall and sallow and was anticipating matrimony with an ardor that had made the maiden one of the country's stock jokes, since the sharer of it seemed to be of secondary importance to the fact. All her spare change and waking hours were spent buying and embroidering linen for the "hope chest" that spoke of her determined confidence in the realization of her ambition.
The three greeted Hughie warmly. Miss Maggie flashed her dazzling teeth; Teeters reached out and smote him with his fist between the shoulder blades; Mrs. Taylor laid her hand upon his arm with her large smug air of patronizing friendliness, and, stooping, beamed into his face.
"We were not looking for you here. Did Mr. and Mrs. Toomey come? Are you alone?"
"I brought Katie Prentice--she's sitting over there."
"Oh!" Mrs. Taylor's expression changed.
The boy looked at her pleadingly as he added: "She has so few pleasures, and she would so like to have acquaintances--to make friends."
"I dare say," dryly.
"She--she doesn't know any one. Won't you--all come and join us?" There was entreaty in the boy's voice.
Mrs. Taylor rose out of her hips until she looked all of seven feet tall to Hughie.
"You must excuse me, Mr. Disston." She hesitated, then added in explanation: "When we came West I told myself that I must not allow myself to deteriorate in rough surroundings, and I have made it a rule never to mingle with any but the best, Mr. Disston. My father," impressively, "was a prominent undertaker in Philadelphia, and as organist in a large Methodist church in that city I came in contact with the best people, so you understand," blandly, "don't you, why I cannot--"