Neither the look nor the tone escaped Belinda. She also saw that Sophy winced from them—that colour stole into her face and that her lips tightened a little. Here was a useful sidelight. So Morry was as hotly American as ever! That was good. Then Sophy must jar on him at times; for Belinda had decided that she was not very American, not even very Southern. Belinda thanked her stars that she herself was so aggressively a daughter of Columbia.
"See how severe Sophy looks at my daring to jest on such a sacred subject," Loring continued. "By Gad! Sometimes I believe she wishes that we'd remained a Colony of Great Britain!"
("Blithering brute!... Can't you see she's only annoyed because you're jawing this way before me?" thought Harold Grey wrathfully.)
But the truth was, that Loring had never forgiven Sophy for the off-hand lesson read him by John Arundel. He half suspected that she had "put him up to it, by gad!" That visit to England had left a big bruise on his amour propre. And he "took it out" on Sophy now and then in some such way.
The champagne was served. Belinda's health was drunk. She finished that glass and began another.
"Be careful, Linda," cautioned her step-mother. "You're not used to wine, you know."
All Belinda's dimples began to play like a throng of elves.
"Oh, Mater!" she cried. She leaned forward and squeezed Mrs. Horton's dry, brown hand in her velvety white one. "You're too innocent and guileless to run loose in this wicked old world by yourself ... you really are!"
"What do you mean by that extraordinary speech, Linda?"
"Why ... as if the girls at the Pension didn't get bottles of fizz smuggled in to them, any old time! Why, whenever we had a spread on the sly, somebody's cousin, or brother, or mash slipped us a quart or so of champagne...."