“I was just saying,” put in Mrs. Stornaway, “that you had such a sympathetic way of drawing people out that I was sure he had told you the whole story.”
“There was not much story,” Baird answered, “and it was too sad to talk over. The poor child went abroad and died in some little place in Italy—of consumption, I think.”
“I suppose she was sick when they went,” commented Mrs. Downing. “I heard so. It was a queer thing for them to go to Europe, as inexperienced as they were and everything. But the father and mother were more inexperienced still, I guess. They were perfectly foolish about the girl—and so was the brother. She went to some studio in Boston to study art, and they had an idea her bits of pictures were wonderful.”
“I never saw her myself,” said Mrs. Stornaway. “No one seems to have seen anything of her but Miss Amory Starkweather.”
“Miss Starkweather!” exclaimed Baird. “Oh, yes—in her letters she mentioned having met her.”
“Well, it was a queer thing,” said Mrs. Downing, “but it was like Miss Amory. They say the girl fainted in the street as Miss Amory was driving by, and she stopped her carriage and took her in and carried her home. She took quite a fancy to her and saw her every day or so until she went away.”
It was not unnatural that at this juncture John Baird’s eyes should wander across the room to where Miss Amory Starkweather sat, but it was a coincidence that as his eye fell upon her she should meet it with a gesture which called him to her side.
“It seems that Miss Amory wishes to speak to me,” he said to his companions.
“He’ll make himself just as interesting to her as he has made himself to us,” said Mrs. Stornaway, with heavy sprightliness, as he left them. “He never spares himself trouble.”
He went across the room to Miss Amory.