“Not quite.” Mrs. Edis had but a faint appreciation of the cost of modern clothes, but she thought it best to begin at once to curb her daughter’s imagination. “It will buy you eight or ten, and no doubt your husband will give you more. But even if he has not as large an income now as he will have later, you have an instinct for dress. Your frock was the simplest at Government House last night, but I noticed that you had adjusted it, and your ribbons, with an air that made it look quite the smartest in the room. You have distinction and style. The President said so at once. You will make a little money go far.”
Julia stared at her mother. It was the first time she had heard her pay a compliment to any one. But she liked it and opened her eyes ingenuously for more. Mrs. Edis laughed, a rare relaxation of those hard muscles under the parchment skin. “Go and comb your hair,” she said, “and make yourself as pretty as possible. Lieutenant France is coming to call this afternoon, and if he does not ask for your hand to-day, he will to-morrow.”
“What shall I do with him? We can’t dance. And I couldn’t think of a thing to say to him last night. I could to some of the young men.”
“The less you say, the better! I will entertain him.”
Tears had threatened again, but they retreated at the prospect of deliverance from an ordeal as formidable as matrimony. “Mother!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Why don’t you marry him?”
“I?”
“Yes. He’ll be like my father, anyhow, and then I should not only have you still, but you could always talk to him —”
“Run and do your hair.”
IV
Julia, her longing eyes fixed on the sea, where she frequently rowed at this hour with one of the old men-servants, had forgotten France’s existence. For quite ten minutes after his arrival, she had obediently smiled upon him, giving him monosyllable for monosyllable, and tried not to compare him to an elderly calf. His opaque, agate-gray eyes stared at her with what she styled a bleating expression, but gradually took fire as her mind wandered. Mrs. Edis talked more than she had done for many years, to cover the defection of her naughty little daughter.