"Oh, Lulu, do come here. This man, this gentleman, has just been telling me the most interesting things—"
She trailed into the music-room with the same graceful languor with which she had trailed into the drawing-room on the occasion when we had last met. The two other porters and myself being negligible figures in the room, her almond eyes rested listlessly on the rugs, which she studied without remark.
"Lulu," Mrs. Mountney began again, with animation, "did you know that in Persian rugs the designs are outlined in rows of knots, and in Chinese by clipping with the scissors? ciselé, this ma—this gentleman calls it, and you can feel a little line! Do put your hand down."
"Oh, I'm too tired," Mrs. Averill protested, in her sweet drawling voice, "and this room's so stuffy. Mildred said she'd have it aired; but I don't know what she's mooning over half her time. She's so dreamy. I often think she ought to be in a convent, or something like that."
The little bit of fluff was more interested in rugs than in Mildred.
"Do tell Mrs. Averill—I'm staying with her—what you've just been saying about the wool. Did you know, Lulu, that Indian wool is hard and Chinese soft?" She looked again toward the hallway, where a second figure had come into view. "Mildred, do come here. There's the most interesting things—I'm so glad I went to that place this morning—and they've sent me the most interesting man—Lulu's like ice, but you're artistic."
Miss Averill, too, advanced into the room; but though I was in full view she paid me and my comrades no particular attention. It was the easier for me not to speak, or to draw any one's glance to myself, for the reason that Mrs. Mountney chattered on, repeating for Mildred's benefit the facts I had just been giving her.
"Just think of having the patience to clip with the scissors round all these designs, and it's the same in the modern rug as in the antique. Do stoop down, Mildred, and let your fingers run along the ciseling; that's what this—this gentleman calls it."
As the girl stooped to satisfy Mrs. Mountney, I ventured to look at her more closely. She was perhaps not older than when I had last seen her two years before, but her face had undergone a change. It made you think of faces chastened, possibly purified, by suffering. Where there had been chiefly a sympathetic common sense there was now the beauty that comes of elevation.
Luckily for me Mrs. Mountney ran on, while we three men, with the lack of individuality of employees before customers, remained indistinguishable objects in the background.