While it lasted, he was disquieted not by thoughts--for he had no definite thoughts--but by a slight emotion like that caused in a dream by the presence of something invisible soundless, and yet fantastic.

There was nothing different or new about his mother, except her new black and silver dress: she was standing there beside him, bending her head a little in her greetings, smiling the same smile she had worn for the half-hour that people had been passing the "receiving" group.

Her face was flushed, but the room was warm; and shaking hands with so many people easily accounted for the pretty glow that was upon her.

At any time she could have "passed" for twenty-five or twenty-six--a man of fifty would have honestly guessed her to be about thirty but possibly two or three years younger--and though extraordinary in this, she had been extraordinary in it for years.

There was nothing in either her looks or her manner to explain George's uncomfortable feeling; and yet it increased, becoming suddenly a vague resentment, as if she had done something unmotherly to him.
The fantastic moment passed; and even while it lasted, he was doing his duty, greeting two pretty girls with whom he had grown up, as people say, and warmly assuring them that he remembered them very well--an assurance which might have surprised them "in anybody but Georgie Minafer!" It seemed unnecessary, since he had spent many hours with them no longer ago than the preceding August, They had with them their parents and an uncle from out of town; and George negligently gave the parents the same assurance he had given the daughters, but murmured another form of greeting to the out-of-town uncle, whom he had never seen before.