“Well,” said she, “it may be so but I don’t want it any different from what it is.”
Pinckney laughed, the laugh of a man who is confessing a weakness.
“I don’t know that I do either,” said he.
It was rank blasphemy against Business. At the club you would often find him bemoaning the business decay of the city he loved, but here, sitting by the girl on the forsaken wharf, in the sunshine, the feeling suddenly came to him that there was something here that business would drive away. Something better than Prosperity.
It was as though he were looking at things for a moment through her eyes.
They came back through the sunlit streets to find Miss Pinckney recovered from the Seth business, and after luncheon that day, assisted by Dinah and the directions of Miss Pinckney, Phyl’s hair “went up.”
“It’s beautiful,” said the old lady, as she contemplated the result, “and more like Juliet than ever. Take the glass and look at yourself.”
Phyl did.
She did not see the beauty but she saw the change. Her childhood had vanished as though some breath had blown it away in the magic mirror.
PART III