“Oh,” said Nina Severing with widely open childlike eyes; “but indeed I quite think you’ve left all that behind, Bertie dear. I always envy your wonderful clear-headed prudence and far-seeing ways. I’m sure you’re quite the last person to be carried away by an impulse—so unlike my silly self, as I always say! But then I was left to be my own guide and mistress so very young—a child. Looking back, I could sometimes almost cry at the thought of that pitiful little figure—a child of twenty, with nothing left but another child to take care of, a memory—and—a star.”
Bertha knew of old her friend’s passion for analogy, more poetical than exact, and had no intention of inquiring into the antecedents of the star. Besides, she was well aware that Nina Severing was a musician, and had no difficulty in connecting the astral body in question with the composition of several extremely popular drawing-room songs.
She said: “I simply took those two and told them——”
“Not a seventh sound, but a star,” Nina quoted penetratingly, immovably determined that her allusion should be made perfectly clear.
Bertie, seeing that the star was not to be ignored, disposed of it by a hurried but sufficiently intense-sounding “Ah—one knows what music means——” She might have added “to you,” but for Nina’s gentle movement of acquiescence, unmistakably claiming and sheltering all music as her own.
“Well, darling, I simply wrote straight to Frederick and asked if we could do anything else than take those two little solitary things home. Of course it isn’t an actual expense, because that wouldn’t be fair to one’s own belongings—they’ve got quite enough to make it possible. But the other things are what matter, after all.”
“Alas! who knows that better than I do?” sighed Nina, a widow, and a rich woman.
Mrs. Tregaskis, a poor one, instantly observed, “Not that it doesn’t imply a good many actual material little sacrifices, which perhaps may pinch here and there—but who would think twice about that? When people tell me that I’m an improvident woman, I never can help thinking of the dear old French saying: ‘Chaque enfant apporte son pain sous le bras.’”
To which Nina, who spoke no French, promptly retorted with much presence of mind:
“Dicunt. Quod dicunt? Dicant! That has been my answer for years to people who can’t mind their own business.”