Everywhere the younger set were in evidence; slim, fresh, girlish
figures passed and gathered and crowded the stairs and galleries with a
flirt and flutter of winnowing skirts, delicate and light as
powder-puffs.
Mrs. Sanxon Orchil, a hard, highly coloured, tight-lipped little woman
with electric-blue eyes, was receiving with her slim brunette daughter,
Gladys.
"A tight little craft," was Austin's invariable comment on the matron;
and she looked it, always trim and trig and smooth of surface like a
converted yacht cleared for action.
Near her wandered her husband, orientally bland, invariably affable, and
from time to time squinting sideways, as usual, in the ever-renewed
expectation that he might catch a glimpse of his stiff, retrousse
moustache.
The Lawns were there, the Minsters, the Craigs from Wyossett, the Grays
of Shadow Lake, the Draymores, Fanes, Mottlys, Cardwells--in fact, it
seemed as though all Long Island had been drained from Cedarhurst to
Islip and from Oyster Bay to Wyossett, to pour a stream of garrulous and
animated youth and beauty into the halls and over the verandas and
terraces and lawns of Hitherwood House.
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