He smiled as he realized Mariposa’s superiority. The young girl saw the smile, and said with the privileged coquetry of a maid who all her life has known herself favored above her fellows:
“Why are you smiling all to yourself, Mr. Shackleton? Can’t we know if it is something pleasant?”
“I was looking at something pretty,” he answered, his eyes full of amusement as they rested on her charming face. “That generally makes people smile.”
She was so used to such remarks that her rose-leaf color did not vary the fraction of a shade. Maud, to whom no one ever paid compliments, looked at her with wistful admiration.
“Is that all?” she said with an air of disappointment. “I hoped it was something that would make us all smile.”
“Well, I have an idea that may make you all smile”—he turned to his wife—“how would you like to go to Europe next spring, Bessie?”
Mrs. Shackleton looked surprised and not greatly elated. On their last trip to Europe, two years before, her husband had been so bored by the joys of foreign travel that she had made up her mind she would never ask him to go again. Now she said:
“But you don’t want to go to Europe. You said last time you hated it.”
“Did I? Yes, I guess I did. Well, I’m prepared to like it this time. We could take a spin over in the spring to London and Paris. We’d make quite a stay in Paris, and you women could buy clothes. You’d come, too, Pussy, wouldn’t you?” he said, turning to the girl.
Her color rose now and her eyes sparkled. She had never been even to New York.