CHAPTER IV

OF TEMPERAMENT

We have the word of Mr. Cyrus Meeker that Honora did not have to learn to
dance. The art came to her naturally. Of Mr. Cyrus Meeker, whose
mustaches, at the age of five and sixty, are waxed as tight as ever, and
whose little legs to-day are as nimble as of yore. He has a memory like
Mr. Gladstone's, and can give you a social history of the city that is
well worth your time and attention. He will tell you how, for instance,
he was kicked by the august feet of Mr. George Hanbury on the occasion of
his first lesson to that distinguished young gentleman; and how, although
Mr. Meeker's shins were sore, he pleaded nobly for Mr. George, who was
sent home in the carriage by himself,--a punishment, by the way, which
Mr. George desired above all things.

This celebrated incident occurred in the new ballroom at the top of the
new house of young Mrs. Hayden, where the meetings of the dancing class
were held weekly. Today the soot, like the ashes of Vesuvius, spouting
from ten thousand soft-coal craters, has buried that house and the whole
district fathoms deep in social obscurity. And beautiful Mrs. Hayden what
has become of her? And Lucy Hayden, that doll-like darling of the gods?

All this belongs, however, to another history, which may some day be
written. This one is Honora's, and must be got on with, for it is to be a
chronicle of lightning changes. Happy we if we can follow Honora, and we
must be prepared to make many friends and drop them in the process.

Shortly after Mrs. Hayden had built that palatial house (which had a high
fence around its grounds and a driveway leading to a porte-cochere) and
had given her initial ball, the dancing class began. It was on a blue
afternoon in late November that Aunt Mary and Honora, with Cousin Eleanor
and the two girls, and George sulking in a corner of the carriage, were
driven through the gates behind Bias and the fat horses of the Hanburys.

Honora has a vivid remembrance of the impression the house made on her,
with its polished floors and spacious rooms filled with a new and
mysterious and altogether inspiring fashion of things. Mrs. Hayden
represented the outposts in the days of Richardson and Davenport--had
Honora but known it. This great house was all so different from anything
she (and many others in the city) had ever seen. And she stood gazing
into the drawing room, with its curtains and decorously drawn shades, in
a rapture which her aunt an