The Bent Twig

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

The mistress of the room now came in. She was in a loose garment of smoke-brown chiffon, held in place occasionally about her luxuriously rounded figure by a heavy cord of brown silk. She advanced to Sylvia with both hands outstretched, and took the girl's slim, rather hard young fingers in the softest of melting palms. "Aren't you a dear, to be so exactly on time!" she exclaimed.

Sylvia was a little surprised. She had thought it axiomatic that people kept their appointments promptly. "Oh, I'm always on time," she answered simply.

Mrs. Draper laughed and pulled her down on the sofa. "You clear-eyed young Diana, you won't allow me even an instant's illusion that you were eager to come to see me!"

"Oh yes, I was!" said Sylvia hastily, fearing that she might have said something rude.

Mrs. Draper laughed again and gave the hand she still held a squeeze. "You're adorable, that's what you are!" She exploded this pointblank charge in Sylvia's face with nonchalant ease, and went on with another. "Jerry Fiske is quite right about you. I suppose you know that you're here today so that Jerry can meet you."

As there was obviously not the faintest possibility of Sylvia's having heard this save through her present informant, she could only look what she felt, very much at a loss, and rather blank, with a heightened color. Mrs. Draper eyed her with an intentness at variance with the lightness of her tone, as she continued: "I do think Jerry'd have burned up in one flare, like a torch, if he couldn't have seen you at once! After you'd fenced and disappeared again into that stupid crowd of graceless girls, he kept track of you every minute with his opera-glasses, and kept saying: 'She's a goddess! Good Lord! how she carries herself!' It was rather hard on poor Eleanor right there beside him, but I don't blame him. Eleanor's a sweet thing, but she'd be sugar and water compared to champagne if she stood up by you."

For a good many months Sylvia had been craving praise with a starved appetite, and although she found this downpour of it rather drenching, she could not sufficiently collect herself to make the conventional decent pretense that it was unwelcome. She flushed deeply and looked at her hostess with dazzled eyes. Mrs. Draper affected to see in her silence a blankness as to the subject of the talk, and interrupted the flow of personalities to cry out, with a pretense of horror, "You don't mean to say you don't know who Jerry Fiske is!"

Sylvia, as unused as her mother to conversational traps, fell into this one with an eager promptness. "Oh yes, indeed; I know him by sight very well," she said and stopped, flushing again at a significant laugh from Mrs. Draper. "I mean," she went on with dignity, "that Mr. Fiske has always been so prominent in college—football and all, you know—and his father being one of our State Senators so long—I suppose everybody on the campus knows him by sight." Mrs. Draper patted the girl's shoulder propitiatingly. "Yes, yes, of course," she assented. She added, "He's ever so good-looking, don't you think—like a great Viking with his yellow hair and bright blue eyes?"

"I never noticed his eyes," said Sylvia stiffly, suspicious of ridicule in the air.

"Well, you'll have a chance to this afternoon," answered her hostess, "for he's the only other person who's to be admitted to the house. I had a great time excusing myself to Eleanor—she was coming to take me out driving—but of course it wouldn't do—for her own sake—the poor darling—to have her here today!"