She looked about her with an aimless and rather nervous smile, which meant that she had something to say but was afraid of it.
“Katie, dear, do you know?” (This with an air of intense importance.) “I don’t think I’ll show Millie my room—not just at first at any rate.”
“Oh, but you must. She’ll be longing to see it.”
“Well, but—will she, do you think? Oh, no, she won’t, not after Paris.... Paris is so grand. Perhaps, later I will—show it her. I mean when she’s more accustomed to the old life.”
But even now it was plain that she had not delivered her purpose. It was imprisoned, like a mouse in a very woolly moth-eaten trap. Soon there will be a click and out it will come!
Her wandering, soft, kindly eyes looked gravely upon Katherine.
“My dear, I wish you’d eaten something. Only a little mince and two of those cheese biscuits.... Katie dear, did you hear what Mr. Mark said at luncheon about leaving us?”
“Yes, Aunt Betty.”
“He said he’d got somewhere from next Monday. Poor young man—not so young now either—but he seems lonely. I’m glad we were able to be kind to him at first. Katie, I have an ‘Idea’.” Impossible to give any picture of the eagerness with which now her eyes were lit and her small body strung on a tiptoe of excitement, “I have an idea.... I think he and Millie—I think he might be just the man for Millie—adventurous, exciting, knowing so much about Russia—and, after Paris, she’ll want someone like that.”
Katherine turned slowly away from her aunt, gazing vaguely, absent-mindedly, as though she had not been thinking of the old lady’s words.