purchased and enjoyed the inexpensive runabout. [Pg 38] [Pg 38] Mrs. Balfame had segregated her smart set for strategic reasons, but that did not mean that both she and they were not kindness itself to the less favoured. Obviously, an imposing party cannot be given by twelve families alone, especially when almost half their number are childless. On all state occasions the list of invited numbered several hundred, in that town of some five thousand inhabitants. It said much for the innate nobility of these wealthier dames of Elsinore, who read the New York society papers quite as attentively as they did the war news, that they submitted without a struggle to the dominance of a woman who never had possessed a car and whose husband's income was so often diverted from its natural course; but Mrs. Balfame not only outclassed them in inflexibility of purpose, but her family was as old as Brabant County; the Dawbarns had never been in what might be called the cavalry regiment, consisting of those few chosen ones living in old colonial houses set in large estates and with both roots and branches in the city of New York; but no one disputed their right to be called Captains of the infantry. And Mrs. Balfame, sole survivor in the direct line, had two wealthy cousins in Brooklyn. Once in a while Dr. Anna, a privileged character, and born at least in Brabant County, took a hand at bridge, but she was a poor player, and, upon the rare occasions when she found time to spend a Saturday afternoon at the Country Club, preferred to rest in a deep chair and watch the young folks flirt and dance until the informal supper was ready. Never had she tripped a step, but she loved youth, and it gave her an acute old maid's delight to observe the children[Pg 39] grow up; snub-nosed, freckled-faced awkward school girls develop at a flying leap into slim American prettiness, enhanced with every late exaggeration of style. She also approved heartily, on hygienic grounds, of the friends of her own generation dancing, even in public, if their partners were not too young and their forms too cumbersome. [Pg 39] Mrs. Balfame and Dr. Anna arrived at the Club shortly after four o'clock. Young people swarmed everywhere, within and without; perhaps twenty older matrons were sitting on the veranda knitting those indeterminate toilette accessories for the Belgians which always seemed to be about to halt at precisely the same stage of progress.
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