"Then he'd have to be introduced to me all over again. You know he thinks I'm a kittenish old lady of seventy."
"If he doesn't like you better when he finds you're not quite twenty, he's different from most men, that's all." There was a new authority in Miss Finch's pronouncement. She spoke as one who knew the sex, to whom its little idiosyncrasies were an open book. And hardly less significant than the change in herself was the fact that Agatha accepted her altered attitude without surprise.
At the same time the girl's impulsive kiss on her old friend's tear-stained cheek was irrelevantly tender. "I must go back to bed," said Agatha. "It'll soon be time to get up. And don't worry over those adorers of yours. It'll do them good to be kept waiting. Men—most men—need to have the conceit taken out of them."
Though she paused in the doorway to charge Miss Finch to go to sleep immediately, she did not act on her own counsel. Instead she ensconsed herself on the broad sill of the east window and swinging her dangling bare feet, watched the face of the sky slowly brighten, flushing pink at last, like the cheek of a girl. Overhead little rosy clouds floated, like cherubs, listening to the chorus of bird song which grew in volume moment by moment.
Another day was beginning, a good day, Agatha was ready to believe. For though between herself and her heart's desire a tortuous deception lay, to be explained and forgiven, the prospect no longer seemed hopeless. It was an eminently satisfactory world, Agatha decided, with Julia out of the running.
UNDERNEATH THE BOUGH
The kind-hearted Miss Kent had decreed a holiday for Howard. With characteristic thoughtfulness she had volunteered to take Forbes off his hands, and suggested they fill in the time by a long walk with a picnic lunch in some shady place, dinner to be postponed until a convenient hour after their return. Howard showed hilarious approval of the plan, and Forbes aroused himself from his melancholy abstraction sufficiently to agree, whereupon Agatha fell to making sandwiches, giving directions to Phemie as she worked.