"Oh, where have you been
My pretty young thing—?"
Which is a rather active affair, especially where the singer shows how she danced her a dance for the Dauphin of France. By that time you won't be surprised when I tell you that Miss Patty's cheeks had a downright glow on them—and I think her heart had something of the same glow, too, because, seating herself at last to dress our crowing heroine, she beamed over to her sister and said (though somewhat out of breath) "Isn't it nice!"
This, of course, was all strictly private.
In public, Mary was brought up with maidenly deportment. You would never dream, for instance, that she was ever tickled with a turkey feather (which Miss Cordelia kept for the purpose) or that she had ever been atomized all over with Lily of the Valley (which Miss Patty never did again because Ma'm Maynard, the old French nurse, smelled it and told the maids). But always deep down in the child was an indefinable quality which puzzled her two aunts.
As Mary grew older, this quality became clearer.
"I know what it is," said Miss Cordelia one night. "She has a mind of her own. Everything she sees or hears: she tries to reason it out."
I can't tell you why, but Miss Patty looked uneasy.
"Only this morning," continued Miss Cordelia, "I heard Ma'm Maynard telling her that there wasn't a prettier syringa bush anywhere than the one under her bedroom window. Mary turned to her with those eyes of hers—you know the way she does—'Ma'm Maynard,' she said, 'have you seen all the other s'inga bushes in the world?' And only yesterday I said to her, 'Mary, you shouldn't try to whistle. It isn't nice.' She gave me that look—you know—and said, 'Then let us learn to whistle, Aunt T'delia, and help to make it nice.'"
"Imagine you and I saying things like that when we were girls," said Miss
Patty, still looking troubled.
"Yes, yes, I know. And yet… I sometimes think that if you and I had been brought up a little differently…."