“And why, mon capitaine,” she smiled back, “may I not sit on the floor?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he explained. “It’s—legs. I’ve discovered something about you.” He spoke with exaggerated jocularity. “When I see your underpinnings, I know I am talking to a child, aged thirteen, who looks upon me as a grandfather; but when you squat on the floor and look up at me like a little coquette”—his tone was that of pure banter—“I get the craziest notion possible into my head, that you have grown up and—that you are sitting there quietly laughing at all my tedious explanation, and well—you know, you fooled me completely that day on the tennis-courts. I could have sworn you were at least twenty-two.”
“Why do you need—to treat me—differently?”
Her eyes rested on him now with quiet gravity. They looked into him and seemed to explore his very mind. This child had been schooled all her life to mask her feelings until few suspected she was capable of any. In this confident hour she unmasked and let him see without shame that he was her capitaine, under whom she would serve right loyally. Youth and faithfulness! Blynn could see all that, too, in her eyes; and perhaps something else, which disturbed him and caused him to come to instant decision.
“Do you know, young lady,” he broke the spell of the silence abruptly, “that in October you are going to the Misses Warren’s Select French and English School for Young Ladies?”
“No!” she stood up. “I won’t go. Who said I must go? That hateful place? Why, everybody makes fun of it. It—it would be torture. I won’t go! Please, Mr. Blynn, don’t let them send me there.”
“But you must go somewhere,” he soothed. “I’ve been inquiring. They’ve made a number of changes since the death of the elder sister. It’s really quite a decent place now. What you need is not book education, but social education.”
“What!”
“I put that badly. I mean you should mix more with your own generation. There are girls who—”
“Girls! I don’t want to know any. Most of them are just simpletons, smirking at boys. Boys! boys! boys! That’s their whole talk. They aren’t interested in books or anything. I tell you, I couldn’t stand being all day with girls. I couldn’t breathe. I—”