“No man calls me dearie and lives to tell the tale,” Jimmie remarked almost dreamily as he squared off. “How’ll you have it, Dave?”
But at that instant there was an unexpected interruption. Alphonse threw open the big entrance door at the farther end of the long room with a flourish.
“Mademoiselle Juliet Capulet,” he proclaimed with the grand air, and then retired behind his hand, smiling broadly.
Framed in the high doorway, complete, cap and curls, softly rounding bodice, and the long, straight lines of the Renaissance, stood Juliet—Juliet, immemorial, immortal, young—austerely innocent and delicately shy, already beautiful, and yet potential of all the beauty and the wisdom of the world.
“I’ve never worn these clothes before anybody but the girls before,” Eleanor said, “but I thought”—she looked about her appealingly—“you might like it—for a surprise.”
“Great jumping Jehoshaphat,” Jimmie exclaimed, “I thought you said she was the same little girl, David.”
“She was half an hour ago,” David answered, 180 “I never saw such a metamorphosis. In fact, I don’t think I ever saw Juliet before.”
“She is the thing itself,” Gertrude answered, the artist in her sobered by the vision.
But Peter passed a dazed hand over his eyes and stared at the delicate figure advancing to him.
“My God! she’s a woman,” he said, and drew the hard breath of a man just awakened from sleep.