“Very well,” said Ora, laughing. “Let me be your safety valve, by all means.”
“Fire away.”
“Oh—how am I to tell you—I scarcely know, myself——”
“I guess you’re waking up. Ruby, who knows human nature like a book——”
Ora half rose. “Have you been talking me over with Miss Miller?” she asked haughtily.
“Not much. Hardly seen her since we met. But you interest Butte, you know. I guess they talk you over good and plenty. It was only a few days before you called that the Miller girls visited with me all day, and they talked a lot about you. Ruby said that if you’d come to out of the sleeping beauty stage, you’d make things hum, and that her fingers just itched to get at your skin and hair.”
“She said that to me once; and I don’t mind telling you that I called her in some time ago.”
“Oh, I’m not a bat. I’ve seen you looking prettier every day, and there’s only one way to do it, when you’ve let yourself go. I’ve had the benefit of Ruby’s advice for years, and I don’t propose to let myself go, not for a minute.”
“Right you are. And do live your life normally from day to day, developing normally. The awakening process, when the Nature that made you is no longer content to be a mere footstool for the mind, is almost as painful as coming to after drowning. I suddenly have become conscious of myself, as it were; I am interested in many more things—personal things—I seem to want far more of life than I did a few months ago——”
“In other words, you don’t know where you’re at.”