At this moment the dining-room door opened and the daughter of the house entered the room.
“Here is Isobel. What kept you so late, young lady?” As Mr. Crump spoke he viewed the young girl with justifiable pride.
“O, Dadsie,” was the reply, “this is recital afternoon, you know.”
“My eye!” exclaimed Clarence, mockingly shading his eyes from his sister’s radiance, “She’s got her joy-bells on, what’s the stunt?”
A haughty toss of the head was all the reply vouchsafed to this brotherly jibe.
“Are you hungry, Isobel?” questioned her mother.
“I’m ever so hungry, Mumsie.” As she spoke, Isobel glanced at Moses who was sitting dumbfounded before the dainty girl he was meeting for the first time. His face was scarlet; his ears were by nature stiffly folded forward and the light shining through them from an electric globe on the wall made them now glow like red shells.
Suddenly a light, as a blinding flash of lightning, seemed to reveal to the boy his deficiencies. He stroked into place the strand of red hair that always stood upright on the crown of his head, untwisted his left leg from around his right and otherwise tried to attain the ideal of knightliness which on the moment crystallized in his mind.
Notwithstanding Moses’ endeavors to be attractive, Isobel Crump’s voice, as she addressed her brother’s friend was so frigid that her words penetrated his ear like sharply-pointed icicles.
Later in the evening, as Isobel moved about the drawing-room in a flounced white frock, her shimmering hair falling over her shoulders, and her dainty high-heeled silver-buckled shoes skimming the roses on the carpet, Moses’ eyes followed her in wonderment. Never before had he seen a creature so dainty, so airy, and so altogether like a princess. Betty was just plain Betty, straight hair plaited stiffly and tied with red ribbon, tanned face and hands, and big brown eyes “looking like they loved everybody.” But here was a girl who could turn disdainful hazel eyes on one and could make one feel like an ignoble worm. Somehow Moses liked feeling like a worm, Isobel Crump was so immeasureably above him that he might as well feel like a worm as like any other more noble inhabitant of this terrestrial globe.