I was surprised, and rather quickly answered: "Well, have I treated him as if he were not a gentleman?"
She was called just then, but when the act was over she came to me again, and taking my hand in her right, she began beating it up and down upon her left: "You are not vexed, are you?" she asked. "Don't be; I only wonder how you can do it, and you are so young! Why," she sighed, from her very soul it seemed to me, "Why," she went on, "ever since I was fourteen years old I have been loving some man who has not loved me!" Tears rose thickly into her eyes. "I am always laying my heart down for some man to trample on!" She glanced toward Mr. McCollom (he who was six feet tall and handsome), a little smile trembled on her lips. I caught her fingers on a swift impulse and squeezed them, she squeezed back answeringly; we understood each other, she was casting her heart down again, unasked. Her eyes came back to me. "Yours is the best way, but I'm too old to learn now, I shall have to go on seeking—always seeking!"
"And finding, surely finding!" I answered, honestly, for I could not imagine anyone resisting her.
"Do you think so?" she said, eagerly; then, rather sadly, she added: "Still it would be nice to be sought once, instead of always seeking."
Poor woman! Charming actress as she was, she did not exaggerate in declaring she was always casting her heart before someone. She married Mr. McCollom, and lived with him in adoring affection till death took him.
The last time I saw her she was my guest here at "The Pines," and as I fastened a great hibiscus flower above her ear, in Spanish fashion, she remarked:
"How little you have changed in all these years! I'll wager your heart is without a scar, while if you could only see mine," she laughed, "it's like an old bit of tinware—so battered, and bent, and dented!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH
Through Devotion to my Friend, I Jeopardize my Reputation—I Own a Baby on Shares—Miss Western's Pathetic Speech.
I had at that time a friend—a rare possession that. "The ideal of friendship," says Madame Switchine, "is to feel as one while remaining two," which is a precise description of the condition of mind and feeling of Mrs. Mollie Ogden and myself. She did not act, but her husband did, and I saw her every night, nearly every morning, and when work permitted we visited one another in the afternoons. There was but one kind of cake on the market that I liked, and that cake, with coffee, was always offered for my refreshment when I was her guest. When she was mine the festal board was furnished forth with green tea, of which she was inordinately fond, and oysters stewed in their own can and served in two mugs; the one announcing, in ostentatious gold letters, that I was "a good girl," was naturally at the service of my guest, while the plain stone-china affair, from the toilet-table, answered my purposes. With what happy eagerness we prepared for those absurd banquets, which we heartily enjoyed, since we were boarders, and always hungry—and how we talked! Of what? Why, good heaven! did I not hold a membership in the library, and were we not both lightning-quick readers? Why, we had the whole library to talk over; besides, there was the country to save! and as Mollie didn't really know one party from the other, she felt herself particularly fitted for the task of settling public questions.