“I ain’t—haven’t said anything about it as I didn’t think it would be any sort of use, but Ora is going to Europe in the fall, and she told me Mark was going to try to persuade you to let me go with her. Now I can go on my thousand dollars, if you don’t mind. Mark wants you to stay with him.”
“He spoke to me about it—I had forgotten. There couldn’t be a better arrangement. This is the time for you to go to Europe—while your mind is still plastic.”
“You don’t seem to mind my going a little bit.” Rapture gave place to suspicion. Ida was not born with faith in man.
“My dear child! What good am I to you now? You might be keeping house for a deaf mute. All I need is the right kind of food and a comfortable bed. I’ll get both at Mark’s. Next year you would see even less of me than you do now. We get our last and most practical drilling in ore-dressing, metallurgy, power-utilisation, and geology. We shall be off half the time on geological expeditions, visits to mines in other parts of the state, smelters, the most up-to-date of the cyanide mills. So you see how much I shall be at home. Go to Europe and enjoy yourself.”
“All right. I’ll go. You bet. And I’ll not miss a trick. There’ll never be a thousand dollars better spent.”
XIV
“NOW I’ve got you where I want you, and I’m goin’ to talk—goin’ to say something I’ve been dyin’ to say for two or three years.”
Ora’s head was in the wash-basin. Miss Miller was leisurely spraying out the lime juice with which she had drenched her hair. Ora gasped, then gurgled something unintelligible, which Miss Ruby interpreted as encouragement to proceed. Mrs. Blake’s manner ever since the hairdresser’s arrival had been uncommonly winning, with something half-appealing, half-confiding that flew straight not only to that experienced young woman’s sympathies but to her professional instinct.
“It’s this,” she continued. “You need a thorough overhauling. In these days, particularly in this altitude, women take care of themselves as they go along, but you don’t. You’ve lost your complexion ridin’ and walkin’ for hours without a veil, sometimes without a hat, and you with a delicate skin like a baby’s and not even using creams. I heard a man say only last Sunday—I was givin’ his wife a facial and he was sittin’ round—that it was an awful pity you had gone off so, as you were the prettiest thing he ever laid eyes on when you came back after your pa’s death, and if Mark—Mr. Blake—hadn’t snapped you up before any other young man got a look at you you’d have had a dozen chances, for all you’ve got such a reputation for brains. ‘A man can stand brains in a white lily of a girl,’ says he, ‘but when she gets older she’s either got to keep her complexion or cut out the brains, and Ora Blake’s done neither’—Say if you squirm like that you’ll get your mouth and eyes full of lemon. His wife said she didn’t believe men cared for them thin white women anyway—she’s bustin’ with health herself—and he gave a grunt that means a lot to a girl who knows men like I do. You never did make anything of yourself and you’ve let yourself go these last two or three years something shameful. If you’d take yourself in hand, get on to yourself once for all, you’d have people twistin’ their necks off to look at you and callin’ you a Mariposa lily, or a Princess Pine, or a White Gladiolus and other poetry names like that. And you could get the reputation of a beauty all right. It makes me sick.”
“Could you make me into a beauty?” Ora’s voice was remarkably languid considering the flaming hue of her face, which, however, may have been due to its prolonged sojourn in the wash-basin. Miss Miller had wrung her hair out and was rubbing it vigorously.