“Why, it is Hebe!” declared Robert, and his voice cracked high. “I never saw anything so lovely in my life.”
“How did it happen?” inquired Mrs. Bruce. She looked at Irving. His face was tense and scowling. “Tell me, Irving,” she demanded in low tones. “How in the world did she get here?”
“How should I know?” he returned; and so irefully that Mrs. Bruce stared at him. Why in the world should it make him angry?
Irving’s heart kept on its quickened pace. So this was what Betsy meant by saying he was likely to see her; why she had adjured him to keep away from her. She had said—Irving’s eyes devoured the white dove; but Rosalie began to speak, and again her voice was music.
“I scarcely know what you would like to hear this rainy evening,” she said, “but I think I will begin by going back to first principles, and telling you the story of Red Riding Hood.”
Mrs. Bruce’s lips would scarcely meet.
“What self-possession!” she murmured; and then for a time all speculation ceased, for the voice of a child began to narrate the classic in the language of a child, and Rosalie carried her audience with her. The little unobserved details of the infantile manner, its occasional abstractions and recalls to the subject, the catching of the breath, and a myriad other peculiarities, were all in evidence, and repeated laughter encouraged the story-teller.
Her big-eyed wonder and horror when she arrived at the thrilling crisis where the wolf devoured Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, “before she even had time to put on her spectacles to see who it was ate her up,” brought down the house; and when the tale drew to a close the clamor of tongues gave witness that Rosalie was a success.
“Isn’t she sweet!”—“Did you ever hear anything so natural!” sped from mouth to mouth. “What a lovely creature she is, and so unaffected!”