“With all your pretty thoughts left out,” I answered, properly humbled.
She spoke in a lower voice as if David must not hear. “I had only one pretty thought for the book,” she said, “I was to give it a happy ending.” She said this so timidly that I was about to melt to her when she added with extraordinary boldness, “The little white bird was to bear an olive-leaf in its mouth.”
For a long time she talked to me earnestly of a grand scheme on which she had set her heart, and ever and anon she tapped on me as if to get admittance for her ideas. I listened respectfully, smiling at this young thing for carrying it so motherly to me, and in the end I had to remind her that I was forty-seven years of age.
“It is quite young for a man,” she said brazenly.
“My father,” said I, “was not forty-seven when he died, and I remember thinking him an old man.”
“But you don't think so now, do you?” she persisted, “you feel young occasionally, don't you? Sometimes when you are playing with David in the Gardens your youth comes swinging back, does it not?”
“Mary A——,” I cried, grown afraid of the woman, “I forbid you to make any more discoveries to-day.”
But still she hugged her scheme, which I doubt not was what had brought her to my rooms. “They are very dear women,” said she coaxingly.
“I am sure,” I said, “they must be dear women if they are friends of yours.”
“They are not exactly young,” she faltered, “and perhaps they are not very pretty—”