"But Selma Gordon has told me all about you," said he—he had risen as she advanced and was shaking hands with her as if they were old friends. "Besides, I saw you the other day—in spite of your effort to prevent yourself from being seen."
"What do you mean?" she asked, completely mystified.
"I mean your clothes," explained he. "They were unusual for this part of the world. And when anyone wears unusual clothes, they act as a disguise. Everyone neglects the person to center on the clothes."
"I wore them to be comfortable," protested Jane, wondering why she was not angry at this young man whose manner ought to be regarded as presuming and whose speech ought to be rebuked as impertinent.
"Altogether?" said Dorn, his intensely blue eyes dancing.
In spite of herself she smiled. "No—not altogether," she admitted.
"Well, it may please you to learn that you scored tremendously as far as one person is concerned. My small nephew talks of you all the time—the 'lady in the lovely pants.'"
Jane colored deeply and angrily. She bent upon Victor a glance that ought to have put him in his place—well down in his place.
But he continued to look at her with unchanged, laughing, friendly blue eyes, and went on: "By the way, his mother asked me to apologize for HIS extraordinary appearance. I suppose neither of you would recognize the other in any dress but the one each had on that day. He doesn't always dress that way. His mother has been ill. He wore out his play-clothes. If you've had experience of children you'll know how suddenly they demolish clothes. She wasn't well enough to do any tailoring, so there was nothing to do but send Leonard forth in his big brother's unchanged cast-offs."
Jane's anger had quite passed away before Dorn finished this simple, ingenuous recital of poverty unashamed, this somehow fine laying open of the inmost family secrets. "What a splendid person your sister must be!" exclaimed she.