Afterward, when Mrs. James and I went to our adjoining bedrooms, I asked her if I had done anything I ought not to have done.
"No, my dear child," said she, smoothing my hair, which I'd begun to unplait. "Nothing except——" and she hesitated.
"Except what? Tell me the worst."
"There isn't any worst. You did nothing that Mrs. West and I wouldn't like to do, if we could. I won't go into particulars, if you don't mind, because it wouldn't be good for you if I did, and might make you self-conscious—a great misfortune that would spoil what some of us like best in you. But you needn't worry."
"Mrs. West looked as if she longed to scratch my eyes out. She needn't have been so very vexed at my being taken for her daughter. I'm not a scarecrow, or a village idiot."
Mrs. James laughed, a well-trained little laugh she has, which seems taught to go on so far and no farther—like the tune I once heard a bullfinch sing in a shop.
"My dear, you're too young and unworldly to understand these things," she said. "A pretty woman, a celebrity like Mrs. West, isn't pleased when she expects all the attention of young gentlemen for herself, to find that she goes for nothing, and all they want is to talk to some one else. And then, at her age, to be taken for a grown-up girl's mother! I couldn't help being sorry for her myself. I know what it is to want to keep young."
"But you're thinking of Doctor James," said I. "And she's a widow. Besides, she's always calling me a child, and telling me to play dolls."
"Well, that isn't to say that she wants all the men there are to play dolls with you," chuckled Mrs. James.
"These were boys, compared to her. She must be thirty."