She was quite convinced that nothing so splendid
had ever been given in the world. She had danced every dance. She had had
the most delicious things to eat, and never had she met so charming a young
man as Mortimer Dwight.
"Some party," she thought as she ran up the steep avenue to her sacrosanct
abode, where her haughty mother was chastely asleep, secure in the belief
that her obedient little daughter was dreaming in her maiden bower.
"What the poor old darling doesn't know 'll never hurt her," thought
Alexina gayly. "She really is old enough to be my grandmother, anyhow. I
wonder if Maria and Sally really stood for it or were as naughty as I am."
Alexina was the youngest of a long line of boys and girls, all of whom
but five were dead. Ballinger and Geary practiced law in New York, having
married sisters who refused to live elsewhere. Sally had married one
of their Harvard friends and dwelt in Boston. Maria alone had wed an
indigenous Californian, an Abbott of Alta in the county of San Mateo, and
lived the year round in that old and exclusive borough. She was now so like
her mother, barring a very slight loosening of her own social girdle, that
Alexina dismissed as fantastic the notion that even a quarter of a century
earlier she may have had any of the promptings of rebellious youth.
"Not she!" thought Alexina grimly. "Oh, Lord! I wonder if my summer destiny
is Alta.
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