purely and, on the whole, correctly spoken‚ÅÝ‚Äîso much so that it seemed at first almost unfamiliar to Bles, and he experienced again the uncomfortable feeling of being among strangers. Then, too, he missed the loud but hearty good-nature of what he had always called ‚Äúhis people.‚Äù To be sure, a more experienced observer might have noted a lively, excitable tropical temperament set and cast in a cold Northern mould, and yet flashing fire now and then in a sudden anomalous out-bursting. But Bles missed this; he seemed to have slipped and lost his bearings, and the characteristics of his simple world were rolling curiously about. Here stood a black man with a white man‚Äôs voice, and yonder a white woman with a Negro‚Äôs musical cadences; and yet again, a brown girl with exactly Miss Cresswell‚Äôs air, and yonder, Miss Williams, with Zora‚Äôs wistful willfulness.
Bles was bewildered and silent, and his great undying sorrow sank on his heart with sickening hopeless weight. His hands got in the way and he found no natural nook in all those wide and tastefully furnished rooms.
Once he discovered himself standing by a marble statue of a nude woman, and he edged away; then he stumbled over a rug and saved himself only to step on Miss Jones’s silken train. Miss Jones’s smile of pardon was wintry.
When he did approach a group and listen, they seemed speaking of things foreign to him‚ÅÝ‚Äîusually of people he did not know, their homes, their doings, their daughters and their fathers. They seemed to know people intimately who lived far away.
“You mean the Smiths of Boston?” asked Miss Jones.
“No, of Cleveland. They’re not related.”
‚ÄúI heard that McGhee of St. ¬ÝPaul will be in the city next week with his daughter.‚Äù