"It fell on the cement floor," Florence reported, peering into the window. "It'll go out pretty soon."
"Then I suppose we might as well do the same thing," said Newland, addressing Julia first and Mr. Dill second. "Miss Atwater and I are just starting for a walk."
Mr. Ridgely also addressed the new arrival. "Miss Atwater and I are just starting for a walk."
"You see, Noble," said the kind-hearted Julia, "I did tell you I had another engagement."
"I came by here," Mr. Dill began in a tone commingling timidity, love, and a fatal stubbornness; "I came by here--I mean I just happened to be passing--and I thought if it was a walking-party, well, why not go along? That's the way it struck me." He paused, coughing for courage and trying to look easily genial, but not succeeding; then he added, "Well, as I say, that's the way it struck me--as it were. I suppose we might as well be starting."
"Yes, we might," Newland Sanders said quickly; and he placed himself at Julia's left, seizing upon her parasol and opening it with determination.
Mr. Ridgely had kept himself closely at the lady's right. "You were mistaken, my boy," he said, falsely benevolent. "It isn't a party--though there's Miss Florence, Noble. Nobody's asked her to go walking to-day!"
Now, Florence took this satire literally. She jumped up and said brightly: "I just as soon! Let's do have a walking-party. I just as soon walk with Mr. Dill as anybody, and we can all keep together, kind of." With that, she stepped confidently to the side of her selected escort, who appeared to be at a loss how to avert her kindness.
There was a moment of hesitation, during which a malevolent pleasure slightly disfigured the countenances of the two gentlemen with Julia; but when Florence pointed to a house across the street and remarked, "There's Great-Uncle Milford and Aunt C'nelia; they been lookin' out of their second guestroom window about half an hour," Julia uttered an exclamation.
"Murder!" she said, and moved with decision toward the gate. "Let's go!"
Thus the little procession started, Mr. Sanders and the sprightly widower at Beauty's side, with Florence and Mr. Dill so close behind that, before they had gone a block, Newland found it necessary to warn this rear rank that the heels of his new shoes were not part of the pavement. After that the rear rank, a little abashed, consented to fall back some paces. Julia's heightened colour, meanwhile, was little abated by some slight episodes attending the progress of the walking-party. Her Aunt Fanny Patterson, rocking upon a veranda, rose and evidently called to someone within the house, whereupon she was joined by her invalid sister, Aunt Harriet, with a trained nurse and two elderly domestics, a solemnly whispering audience. And in the front yard of "the Henry Atwater house," at the next corner, Herbert underwent a genuine bedazzlement, but he affected more. His violent gaze dwelt upon Florence, and he permitted his legs slowly to crumple under him, until, just as the party came nearest him, he lay prostrate upon his back in a swoon. Afterward he rose and for a time followed in a burlesque manner; then decided to return home.