Then the General and Alec came in, creating a diversion for which Blue Bonnet, who was feeling rather breathless, for all her brave showing, was truly grateful.
“My dear young lady,” General Trent turned to her, after paying his respects to the rest—“or, I should say, Señorita?—this is a surprise!”
“To all of us, General,” Mrs. Clyde said. “On the whole, I think I like it.”
Blue Bonnet came to rest a hand on her grandmother’s shoulder. “Truly, Grandmother?” she asked softly. “I—hoped you would.”
“Isn’t she stunning!” Alec exclaimed.
When Delia came to announce dinner a few moments later, she broke off suddenly in the middle of her sentence—much to her own confusion—to stare open-eyed at Blue Bonnet.
“If you could see her!” she said to Katie, escaping as soon as might be to the kitchen. “Sitting there like a picture—and that innocent! For all the world as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth! ‘And please don’t say anything,’ says she to me—and well she might! I’d like to be knowing what her aunt do be thinking of such goings-on this minute.”
“I’m after thinking,” Katie remarked wisely, “that the mistress herself do be enjoying the bit of a lark with the best of them. Sure and it isn’t the same house, since the darlin’ came.”
Meanwhile, Blue Bonnet found herself placed between the eldest of those “Boston relatives” and Alec. She had never seen anyone before quite like this elderly gentleman, whom it seemed almost disrespectful to call “Cousin Tracy,” even though he had told her to.
He should have looked old, but he didn’t; she supposed he was what Aunt Lucinda called “well preserved”; and she wondered, a dancing light in her eyes, if perhaps he was not looking upon her as being something of a “pickle.”