“It is like keeping one grand lady in the house,” Fan added, in her bright way. “And it gives one a feeling of the utmost respectability.”
Miss Churchill smiled at that. She would always be a handsome woman, though I don’t imagine any one had ever called her a pretty girl; she was too large and grand. Her forehead was broad, her hair smooth as satin, a peculiar unglossy brown, and it always gave me the idea of a rich lustreless silk. Her eyes were very nearly of the same shade; her chin broad and firm, and her teeth wonderfully white, strong and even. Then she had a rather pale but perfect complexion.
“What a quaint child you are!” and she seated herself gracefully in the arm-chair, “Mrs. Endicott, you might be some historical personage with her maids of honor about her. That is what my thought is like. And you do look so sociable! I have been calling on the Maynards; and you would be surprised at the amount of thinking I have done between there and here. My seeing you has just put it into shape. Or, I suppose, it started with something that Lucy said as I was coming out.”
“How is Lucy?!” asked mamma.
“Rather poorly. And then she has been a good deal disappointed. We were expecting Mrs. Ogden and Helen; and Lucy counts so much on that every summer! But the Fates have overruled. They go to Newport for the whole season. Word came three days ago. I have hardly known how to entertain Lucy since.”
“Does she not go out?”
“Only for about half an hour; her back is so weak that it fatigues her.”
“Yet I should not think she would ever get tired of reading and looking at your beautiful pictures, and all the rest. There is so much, that by the time I reached the end, the first part would be new to me again,” Fan said.
“You think that, because you can have a constant variety. And sixteen carries with it a glamour which fades afterwards. Do you not find it so, Mrs. Endicott?”
Mamma blushed and looked puzzled.