"What's the matter, honey?" I asked. She had always been my little girl, and I felt at times as if I were unduly severe in my discipline of her.
"Grace, you don't know how I feel!"
The words came jerkily—and I knew that I was in for it.
"Does your head ache?" I asked hastily. "You'd better get on the car and ride out into the—"
"My head doesn't ache!" she denied stoutly. "It's my h-heart!—To see you—Grace Chalmers Christie—racing around to such things as this in a coat-suit! You ought, by right of birth and charm, be the chief ornament of such affairs as this—the chief ornament, I say—yet you go carrying a 'hunk o' copy paper!'"
"And you get up and leave places before you get a bite of food—and race back to that office, like a wild thing, to 'turn it in!'"
This contemptuous use of my own jargon caused me to laugh.
"And do you think that the wearing of this heavy pin will prove so exhausting that I'll have to stay at Mrs. Walker's to-day for a bite of food?" I asked.
She looked at me in helpless reproach.