Bardek had done wonderful things with her, the French, for instance; she had the very tang of a native, even the shrugs and almost inimitable twists of hand and head. Blynn recognized the method; it was his own; and he respected Bardek’s results as a fellow-craftsman would; but he was not sure that he should respect Bardek’s morals.
She was the most interesting of all the children he had semi-officially under his charge, but she was something else. The memory of that illusion of maturity he could not dissipate by any amount of concentration upon the sum of her actual years. She had come at him first as a young woman challenging him to meet her on equal terms, and had stirred him as Olivia had been stirred by the disguised Viola. Some of the suggestion of that mistake continued to stay with him. The grave brown eyes searched him as he talked, and threw him into the half-belief that some witch had taken a woman and had given her the shape and habiliments of a child.
As he walked along the unfrequented streets of Mount Airy he scolded himself aloud for his shameful imaginings; but he could not shake them off. He reminded himself of Olivia fancying herself in love with Viola, and laughed. “Perhaps it is not Gorgas, but her sister. It really was brother Sebastian in the play. I’ll look her up. Keyser will—Keyser!—Bolts and shackles! What a name!”
One day he contrived, therefore, to chat with Miss Keyser, and so they arranged to spend an afternoon driving together. But on the way to “look Keyser up” he lapsed into a contemplation of the first meeting with Gorgas at the tennis-courts. “If this were Italy,” he grinned, “the thing would be simple enough; or even ‘Little Italy,’”—the near-by city’s Italian colony—“Thirteen, I hear, is rather the proper age there. At fifteen the little Italians either have bambinos or they are on the shelf. Wasn’t Lady Devereaux, Sidney’s famous Stella, about that age? I’ll have to look up precedents. Beatrice? Dante’s Beatrice? She was a ‘fourteener,’ wasn’t she? And Juliet! Ah! Juliet was just thirteen!” He quoted humorously from the play, “‘On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen; that shall she, marry.’... Guess Shakespeare knew what he was about!... I’ve had a sad jar. Those legs! And the braid, and the silly ribbon!... I haven’t felt so cheap since—”
He laughed aloud suddenly and set a frightened little spaniel barking with fury.
“Go it, old boy,” he called. “You aren’t half so startled as I was.... Well,” he nodded his head vigorously. “She gave me a little insight into myself and into what’s coming to me some day, I expect. The next time, I hope it will be a real woman. Just the same, I’m going to be always grateful to the little witch for the deception; and I’ll pay, too.”... He closed his lips with determination. “That Bardek fellow will be looked into—migh-ty care-ful-ly, I tell you, boy.... He’s been putting things in her head, I warrant.... Thought all that wise talk was second-handed.... Where did she ever come across Gardiner’s ‘Femine’? Heavens! Why, it’s full of rot, just the sort of thing to upset a girl and persuade her that wrong is right.... But I must be careful. If we drive her sort—” He threw up his hands.
Miss Keyser Levering was already waiting in the little two-seated family carriage.
“Am I late?” he asked cheerfully.
“No; I’m early,” she responded, digging under the seat for a rug. “That shows that you don’t know me as well as you should. Some people are always two minutes late. My specialty is being two minutes early. Jump in; I’m going to drive. This ‘off’ animal is ‘Sorry,’ not ‘Gyp’; ‘Sorry’ has to be handled by one of the family. ‘Gyp’ is never in the stable days like this.”
At the mention of “Gyp,” Blynn’s mental ears stood up, but he got into the carriage with much irrelevant jesting over the relation between horses and horse-sense.