“Waffles?” she said, as if she knew of none and the word were strange to her. “Waffles?”
“Aren’t you going to eat them? I supposed that was why you came here.”
She looked down at her plate, appeared surprised to find it occupied, and uttered a courtesy laughter with such grace it seemed almost that she sang the diatonic scale. This effect was so pronounced, indeed, that several people at other tables turned—again—to look at her, and Mr. Bromley reddened. “Oh, yes,” she said. “You mean these waffles. Yes, indeed!” And here she repeated her too musical laughter, accompanying it with several excited gestures of amazement as she exclaimed, “Imagine my not noticing them when they’re absolutely my favourite food! Absolutely they are, my dear man, I do assure you!”
Then, having touched a waffle with her fork, she set the fork down, placed her elbows on the table, rested her chin in her hands and gazed upon her companion lustrously. “Mr. Bromley,” she said, “how did your father and mother happen to choose ‘Gregory’ for your first name? Were you named for somebody else, or did they just have kind of an inspiration to call you Gregory.”
“I was named for an uncle,” he replied briefly.
“How beautiful!” she murmured.
“What?”
“It’s a beautiful name,” she said, and, not changing her attitude, continued to gaze upon him.
“Why in the world don’t you eat your food?” he asked, impatiently. He had become but too well aware that Cornelia was attracting a covertly derisive attention; and he began to think her a bothersomely eccentric child. Following her noticeable elegance and her diatonic laughter, her dreamy attitude in the presence of untouched waffles was conspicuous, and he was annoyed in particular by the interest with which two occupants of a table against the opposite wall were regarding him and Cornelia.
One of these interested persons was another of his pupils, a girl of Cornelia’s age. He could not fail to note how frequently she glanced at him, and after each glance whispered seriously with her mother across their table; then both would stare surreptitiously at him and his rapt vis-à-vis. There was something like a disapproving surveillance—even something inimical—in their continuing observation, he thought; nor was he remote from the truth in this impression.