“I’d like very much to meet your grandmother,” returned Mrs. Marriott. “Won’t you present me?”
Joanne looked up from under her dark lashes. She wasn’t quite sure whether her grandmother, being a very particular lady, would like the idea of meeting a perfectly strange person of whom Joanne could tell her nothing except that she had made the acquaintance in a very unconventional way. However, she reflected, that she did very often pick up acquaintances in travelling, and her grandmother had followed them up or dropped them as she felt disposed. So she replied politely: “If Gradda admires you as much as I do she’ll be delighted. I picked you out that first day as the dearest-faced person on board.”
Mrs. Marriott smiled. “Thank you for that very nice compliment,” she said quietly.
Joanne fidgeted around for a few minutes. “Let’s go now,” she said at last.
“Go where?” asked Bob.
“Over to Gradda; we may as well get it over.”
Mrs. Marriott laughed, but she gave Joanne’s hand a squeeze. “You are simply delicious,” she exclaimed.
Joanne wondered why, but jumped up, settled her cap upon her curly head and led the way to the other side of the deck where her grandmother sat. Dr. Selden was pacing up and down in company of another man. Joanne paused in front of Mrs. Selden saying: “Gradda, dear, I want you to know my friend, Mrs. Marriott, and this is Bob, her son.”
Mrs. Selden removed her eye-glasses and looked up with faint suspicion at the tall, handsome woman before her. “Oh, Mrs. Marriott,” she said, “I have heard Joanne speak of you. Won’t you sit down? Joanne, take that rug of your grandfather’s out of the way, and—Robert, is it? I’m afraid there is not another vacant chair for you.”
“Oh, never mind, Mrs. Selden,” returned Bob, quickly lifting the rug from the steamer chair and tucking it around his mother when she sat down. “Joanne and I will just walk while you and mother talk, that is, if you don’t object.”