“Certainly I was, though this great teazing thing beside me would like to make out that when I was eighteen I looked just as I do now.”
“Show the kind gentleman your picture,” said Sylvia. “She wears it round her neck in a locket, the vain old mountebank.”
Mrs. Gainsborough opened a gold locket, and Michael looked at a rosy young woman in a pork-pie hat.
“That’s myself,” said Mrs. Gainsborough sentimentally. “Well, and I always loved being young better than anything or anybody, so why shouldn’t I wear next my own heart myself as I used to be?”
“But show him the others,” Sylvia demanded.
Mrs. Gainsborough fetched from a desk two daguerreotypes in stained morocco cases lined with faded piece velvet. By tilting their surfaces against the light could be seen the shadow of a portrait’s wraith: a girl appearing in pantalettes and tartan frock; a ballerina glimmering, with points of faint celeste for eyes, and for cheeks the evanescence of a ghostly bloom.
“Oh, look at her,” cried Sylvia. “In her beautiful pantalettes!”
“Hold your tongue, you!”
They started again with their sparring and mock encounters, which lasted on and off until supper was over. Then they all went back to the other room and sat round the fire.
“Tell us about the General,” said Sylvia.