"Not I, Doll, not I, if you will pardon me the frankness."
"Oh, that is easily done." Then with a merry ripple of laughter, "It is much easier, I fancy, for a woman to speak of the time when she was plain than to refer to the time when—when she was beautiful. What an absurd speech that is for me to make," she said confusedly.
"I certainly did not expect to find so great a change," said I. "Why, Doll, you are wondrous, glorious, beautiful. I can't find words—"
"Then don't try, Cousin Malcolm," she said with a smile that fringed her mouth in dimples. "Don't try. You will make me vain."
"You are that already, Doll," I answered, to tease her.
"I fear I am, cousin—vain as a man. But don't call me Doll. I am tall enough to be called Dorothy."
She straightened herself up to her full height, and stepping close to my side, said: "I am as tall as you. I will now try to make you vain. You look just as young and as handsome as when I last saw you and so ardently admired your waving black mustachio and your curling chin beard."
"Did you admire them, Doll—Dorothy?" I asked, hoping, though with little faith, that the admiration might still continue.
"Oh, prodigiously," she answered with unassuring candor. "Prodigiously. Now who is vain, Cousin Malcolm François de Lorraine Vernon?"
"I," I responded, shrugging my shoulders and confessing by compulsion.