“How was your mother looking?” he finally decided upon.
“Dreary,” answered Mathilde, with a laugh.
“Does this picture remind you of any one?” asked Wayne, suddenly.
Mr. Lanley looked at him as if he hadn’t heard, and frowned.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“Don’t you think there’s a look of my mother about it?”
“No,” said Mr. Lanley, rather loudly, and then added, “Well, I see what you mean, though I shouldn’t—” He stopped and turning to them with some sternness, he asked them how they accounted for their presence in the museum at such an hour and alone.
There was nothing to do but to tell him the truth. And when Wayne had finished, Mathilde was surprised at her grandfather’s question. She thought he would ask what her mother thought of it. If they had been alone, she would have told him that Adelaide thought Wayne a commonplace young man with stubby hands; but as it was, she had resolved to put her mother’s opposition on a more dignified plane. Only Mr. Lanley did not ask the question of her. It was to Wayne he was speaking, when he said:
“What does your mother think of it?”
“Oh, my mother,” answered Pete. “Well, she thinks that if she were a girl she’d like to go to China.”