Bonny-Gay’s eyes had rested searchingly upon Mary Jane’s face. She would have been delighted herself if her playmate could have remained all the time in the Place, but she saw the sudden fear and was puzzled by it. Yet she did not urge the matter, and the only request she made of her indulgent mother was:
“Just bring something new for the baby.”
Again Mary Jane’s face was troubled and she exclaimed:
“Please, Bonny-Gay don’t! He has too many things already, that you have sent him. I’d rather not, please.”
“Very well,” said Mrs. McClure, as she kissed her little girl and went away. But she was considerably annoyed. She felt that she did not exactly “know how to deal with that class of people,” to which Mary Jane belonged. She wished that Bonny-Gay had not taken this absurd fancy of hers. She wished that the Gray Gentleman had never done that unwise thing of carrying her daughter into the region and knowledge of Dingy street. It was all very well for him to devote his time still, as he had all his life and fortune, toward making the lives of poor children brighter. Everybody must have a hobby, and that was his, she supposed. Of course, he was a noble man, and his name was known far and wide as that of a philanthropist. Still—Hmm. It would soon end, anyway. Bonny-Gay was improving rapidly, and was so perfectly healthy that there was nothing to fear. And if she needed her own carriage that evening, and Mary Jane remained still obstinate, she must be sent home in a cab. That was all.
With these thoughts she departed, but she had in some way left an altered atmosphere behind her. Her difficulty in understanding “that class of people” arose from the simple fact that she had, as yet, no real sympathy with them. It seemed to her that they were altogether different from herself; that they were duller, less capable of any true nobility. But she was, in reality, kind and good at heart, with many social cares to tax her nerves, and she was one day to have her present ignorance enlightened.
In the silence that followed her exit, Bonny-Gay’s hand stole softly out and touched Mary Jane’s cheek, down which a tear was rolling. And in the child’s touch was that perfect sympathy which the mother’s tone had lacked.
“Don’t cry, Mary Jane. He’ll come back.”
Mary Jane’s head lifted instantly and her face brightened.
“How’d you know ’twas that I was thinking about?”