"Well, I don't know," said Jane, filling up the breach in the first fashion that presented itself. "If pa had the same gift of language that you have, I should feel surer." She picked out her puffs, and then leaned back negligently with her hands crossed. She was too thoroughly grounded by this time to be discomposed by any youth seven or eight years her junior.
The youth shifted his feet.
"I saw you with my sister a minute ago," continued Jane. She knew, without looking round to see, that Mrs. Bates was smiling in the anxious, would-be-helpful way of parents who have put their offspring at a disadvantage.
"Yes—oh yes," the young man responded, with precipitation. "We had a very nice polka, indeed."
"Well," said Jane to herself, "I can talk about polkas and lots of other things." And she did. She held and entertained the young man for a full ten minutes. She found, after all, that he was in no degree constrained or backward, and she made him do himself justice.
"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Bates, as he withdrew, "you made my Billy quite brilliant. I don't know when I have heard so much real conversation!"
"That's all right," responded Jane; "I was young myself once. I haven't forgotten that."
"Only you mustn't fascinate him," protested the elder woman, with a burlesque of maternal anxiety. "I want somebody else to do that." She gave Jane a smile full of meaning.
"Aha!" thought Jane, and wondered if she were to see a certain little romance resumed after the lapse of so many lumbering years.
"But she didn't seem to mind Paston any. Well, why should she?" concluded
Jane.