"I'm not certain yet," said I. "I'm thinking it over. I don't see why I should be sent off across the water with strangers, at a moment's notice, and I——"
"'Tisn't a moment's notice. It's five days. They're not sailing till Wednesday, and as they've a suite engaged,—the best on the ship, Mrs. Ess Kay says,—your going won't put them out a bit, and they'll love having you. As for the whys and wherefores, Mother's been telling you, hasn't she?"
"She talked about my health and valuable experiences, and a lot of things in the air, but I feel there's something behind it, and I hate mysteries——"
"If I can convince you it's for the good of the family in general, if not yours in particular, will you be a nice, white, woolly lamb, and go with your kind little American friends?" Vic broke in, with her head on my shoulder and an arm slipped round my waist.
"Mrs. Ess Kay's neither little nor kind," said I, "but, of course, I'll do anything to help, if only I'm treated like a rational, grown-up human being."
"And so you shall be. I told Mother it would be much better to be frank with you, if you are a Baby. It's too late to explain things now, but if you'll be sweet to Mrs. Ess Kay, and agree with everything everybody says about your trip, when we come up to bed and Mother's door's shut, I'll make a clean breast and show you exactly how matters stand."
With this, we separated, for we could hear Mrs. Ess Kay's voice in the corridor, talking to Sally Woodburn on the way downstairs. Her voice is never difficult to hear; rather the other way; and Miss Woodburn's soft little drawl following it, reminded me of a spoonful of Devonshire cream after a bunch of currants.
Mother was with them both in the oak drawing-room when Vic and I got down, and I found myself staring at Mrs. Ess Kay with a new kind of criticism in my mind; indeed, it hadn't occurred to me before to criticise at all. I'd only felt that I didn't want to come any closer to her. Now I was to come much closer, it seemed, and I looked at the glittering lady, wondering how it would feel to be so close—wondering what she herself was.
Outside, she's more like the biggest and most splendid dressmaker's model ever made for a Paris show-window than anything else I can think of; at least, she is like that from under her chin down to the tips of her toes. I say under her chin, for that feature, as well as all the others above it, are miles removed from a pretty, wax lady in a show-window.
I never supposed till I met Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox, that a live woman could have a figure exactly like the fashion-plates, swelling like a tidal wave above an hourglass of a waist, and retreating far, far into the dim perspective below it, then suddenly bulging out behind like a round, magnificent knoll, after a deep curve inward under the shoulders. But Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox's figure does all these things even when she stands still, and a great many more when she walks, which act she accomplishes in a grand, sweepy kind of a way, with her head a little thrown back, as if she wants everybody to know that she is tremendously important in the scheme, not only of the world, but of the universe.