Always, ’way back as Charlotte Ransome, she had loved the showy, and she loved it still, as evidenced by the scarlet ribbon from which her fan hung, and the flowered muslin, showing the hand of village dressmaking. But she bore herself with the smiling pleasure of a child in them.
Willy joined them. He had been talking with Mr. Jonas, and evidently had declined the expedition too, for the little man, calling to the setter, went off grumbling and upbraiding the lot of them.
“We came early to avoid the heat,” Charlotte explained, as they went to join Molly and Mr. Henderson.
Molly’s eyes swept Mrs. Leroy’s youthful fineries wonderingly, curiously. It was no credit to Molly that her sixth sense lay in an instinctive selection of the appropriate in the beautiful. She wondered much as a child wonders over the mysterious, at what she more often than not saw on others.
She lolled back now in her simple dress, of which Alexina had reason to know the cost, and she lolled indifferently—Celeste or some one would press out the rumples when need be—then she held out a pretty hand to Charlotte.
But Mrs. Leroy, the greetings over, spread her draperies with some care and absorption as she sat down. She was another type of helpless person, the reverse of Molly, with a carping sense of responsibility.
Molly’s gaze followed her concern with lazy interest in which lurked laughter, for the dress upon which the care was bestowed was so, well—
Alexina’s face grew hot; she hated Molly, whose every thought she was reading; and, by the girl’s arrangement, they fell into two groups, Molly and the men making one, King William perched on the railing of the gallery, and Alexina and Mrs. Leroy the other, drawn a little apart. There was so much to say.
“We see the Kentucky papers,” Charlotte told Alexina, “so I know of most of the happenings.” She drew a little breath. “And Austen Blair is married?”
“Yes,” said Alexina, “just before we came.”