“Who can imagine me seventeen?” she asked gayly as she entered the library, softly lighted by many wax candles. Her mother, who was again enjoying the freedom of the house, and who was now snugly ensconced in her own particular chair, looked up at her.
“That little frock makes me long to take you in my lap,” said she, brightly.
“And it makes me long to be there,” answered Ruth, throwing herself into her mother’s arms and twining her arms about her neck.
“How now, Mr. Arnold, you can’t scare me tonight with your sarcastic disapproval!” she laughed, glancing provokingly over at her cousin seated in a deep blue-cushioned chair.
“I have no desire to scare you, little one,” he answered pleasantly. “I only do that to children or grown-up people.”
“And what am I, pray, good sir?”
“You are neither; you are neither child or woman; you are neither flesh nor spirit; you are uncanny.”
“Dear me! In other words, I am a conundrum. Who will guess me?”
“You are the Sphinx,” replied her cousin.
“I won’t be that ugly-faced thing,” she retorted; “guess again.”