“You look as if you were surprised to see me, Uncle David,—are you?” she said, slipping a slim hand, warm through its immaculate glove, into his. “You knew I was coming, and you came to meet me, and yet you looked as surprised as if you hadn’t expected me at all.”
“Surprised to see you just about expresses it, Eleanor. I am surprised to see you. I was looking 209 for a little girl in hair ribbons with her skirts to her knees.”
“And a blue tam-o’-shanter?”
“And a blue tam-o’-shanter. I had forgotten you had grown up any to speak of.”
“You see me every vacation,” Eleanor grumbled, as she stepped into the waiting motor. “It isn’t because you lack opportunity that you don’t notice what I look like. It’s just because you’re naturally unobserving.”
“Peter and Jimmie have been making a good deal of fuss about your being a young lady, now I think of it. Peter especially has been rather a nuisance about it, breaking into my most precious moments of triviality with the sweetly solemn thought that our little girl has grown to be a woman now.”
“Oh, does he think I’m grown up, does he really?”
“Jimmie is almost as bad. He’s all the time wanting me to get you to New York over the weekend, so that he can see if you are any taller than you were the last time he saw you.”
“Are they coming to see me this evening?” 210
“Jimmie is going to look in. Peter is tied up with his sister. You know she’s on here from China with her daughter. Peter wants you to meet the child.”