Cornelia’s schoolmate was enjoying herself, excited by what she had easily prevailed upon a nervous mother to see as a significant contretemps. Moreover, the daughter had just imparted to the mother a secret known to half the school, but not to Mrs. Cromwell.
“Crazy about him!” the schoolmate whispered. “Absolutely! She picked up the stub of his pencil and kept it, and a piece of an old broken pipe. We teased her, and she got red and ran away. She won’t speak to us for days if we say anything about him she doesn’t like. Everybody knows she’s simply frantic. Did you ever see such airs as she’s been putting on, and did you hear her calling him her ‘dear man’ and talking about ‘I do assure you’? And then looking at him like that—the poor smack!”
“I never in all my life saw anything like it!” the mother returned, her brow dark and her eyes wide. “She looked straight at us and never made the slightest sign when we bowed to her! The idea of as careful a woman as Mrs. Cromwell allowing her daughter to get into such a state, in the first place, is very shocking to me; and in the second, to permit her to come here, at her age, and lunch in public with a man she’s in such a state about—a man supposed to be her teacher and old enough to be almost her grandfather—I simply can’t imagine what she means by it.”
The schoolmate giggled. “Cornelia’s mother? Don’t you believe it. Mrs. Cromwell doesn’t know a thing about it.”
“Then she ought to know, and immediately. If one of my daughters behaved like that, I should certainly be thankful to any one who informed me of it. I certainly——”
“Look!” the schoolmate whispered, profoundly stirred. “Look at her now!”
Cornelia was worth the look thus advised. Under repeated pressure to dispose of her waffles, she had made some progress with them, but now with the plate removed and a cooling sherbet substituted before her, she had resumed her rapt posture, her elbows upon the table, her chin upon her hands, her wistful bright eyes fixed upon the face of the uncomfortable gentleman opposite her.
“Was your uncle a very distinguished man, Mr. Bromley?” she asked. “I mean the one they named you ‘Gregory’ after.”
“Not in any way,” he said. He had finished his own lunch, and moved back slightly but significantly in his chair. “Hadn’t you better eat your sherbet?” he suggested. “I believe it’s about time for me to go.”
She sighed, lowered her eyes, and obediently ate the sherbet; but ate it so slowly that by the time she had finished it they were alone in the room except for a waitress, who made her own lingering conspicuous.