She winced. "What shall I do about it? How can I manage? I have no friends now. There is nobody I can count on to help them."
He leaned toward her, his lined face for the moment almost beautiful.
"There is always me, Kate. Hasn't the time come to let me help you, for their sakes? As Mrs. Thorpe—" he paused, and continued quietly, with a rather set look about his jaw, "As Mrs. Thorpe I think I can promise you a few friends, at least. And a—protector—though I may not look like one," he finished, wistfully.
She shook her head, not meeting his eyes. She always avoided, when she could, these offers of help, knowing that when he grew tired of making them she would miss him. But she had not the courage to send him away, to break with him entirely. She was not consciously selfish. If it had been suggested to her that she was interfering with her friend's career, she would have been shocked and grieved beyond measure. Thorpe's devotion was a thing so complete, so perfect in its unobtrusiveness, that it defeated its own purpose. She simply took it for granted.
He made no protest now; even smiled at her reassuringly, knowing that it troubled her to hurt him. Only the eagerness that had for the moment beautified his face died away, and Jacqueline, happening to glance across at him, thought, "Poor Goddy! How old and out of it all he looks!"
She drew him into the conversation. "I was just telling the author, Professor Jimsy, that he inherits his patrician nose from you," she said (somewhat to the author's embarrassment). "And he says one doesn't inherit from uncles. That's nonsense! If property, why not noses? And character?" she added wickedly. "Oh, I see lots of resemblances between you!"
"Do you?" murmured the Professor, rather grimly.
"For instance, you both go in for psychology—only you don't publish yours in large purple novels."
"I do not," said the Professor.
Channing looked at her with surprise. Was it possible that this backwoods hoyden—Bouncing Bet of the Banister, he had named her to himself, with a taste for alliteration—was it possible that she had read any of his books? She was hardly more than a child. The hair hung down her back in a thick, gleaming rope, her merry gamin's face lacked as yet all those subtleties, those nuances of expression which fascinated him in such faces as her mother's. Channing was still young enough to prefer the finished product. But if she read his books....