“O, yes, grandmother,” said Elsa warmly. “Alice, especially, has beautiful manners; Betty says her mother especially likes to have her play with Alice.”
“I must speak to Mrs. White about it, to make sure,” said Mrs. Danforth, and Elsa’s face coloured sensitively, for she felt that her grandmother thought she was not telling the truth.
“Bedtime now, Elsa,” said Mrs. Danforth, the next moment. “Put away your book. And try to remember people’s names. It is something a lady always does.”
“Yes, grandmother,” said Elsa dutifully.
Almost any one, looking on, would have been surprised to see Elsa walk up to her grandmother and, instead of kissing her good night, put out her hand; and then to see Mrs. Danforth touch the slender, childlike hand for only a brief second with the tips of her jewelled fingers. But Elsa understood; long ago her grandmother had explained that she thought kissing was an unnecessary and foolish custom.
“Good night, Elsa. Remember to say your prayers.”
“Yes, grandmother. Good night.”
Elsa went slowly out of the room and up the polished stairs to her own room, which always seemed empty to her, with its white-papered walls, white bed, white furniture, curtains, even white frames on the pictures of Greek statuary and ruined temples.
Mrs. Danforth never thought of tucking Elsa into bed; and the child, as she hung her black dress over the chair to-night, shed a few tears—as she often did—over having to go to bed all alone in that white, white room where her little black dresses looked so black.
It seemed to Elsa that she had been wearing black dresses all her life. Three years ago her mother had died, then a year later her grandfather, Judge Danforth, died, and within the last twelve months, her father. Since her father’s death, her own pretty home had been broken up, her old nurse dismissed, and she had lived with her grandmother, at first in the great New York house, and now for three months amid new surroundings in Berkeley.