“He’s dreadfully shy,” I responded, after that kind of a hard swallow that rasps and scratches as it goes down.
“Heavens, and earth! No man ought to be afraid of an old woman like me!” Miss Sheila mused.
“You aren’t old,” I put in, and almost sharply. “You have a prettier skin than I have, and as Leslie said, your silver hair simply adds a note of ‘chic.’”
Miss Sheila laughed. “That sounds like Leslie,” she commented, and that led her to change the subject, for which I was grateful. “Odd, my coming over with Ben Forbes, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, wasn’t it?”
“Nice man, really. Has something of the Grand Commander manner, but—he’ll need it. Splendid arrangement I honestly think. . . . I want to meet your Sam.”
“I want you to meet him. But he’s not mine,” I answered.
“But I hope you’ll marry some time,” said Miss Sheila. “Go home and work a few years if you like, dear, but if you care for any one, and any one cares for you, don’t let any one, or anything stand between you; it doesn’t pay.” She paused a moment. “But,” she continued after this little interval, “if love doesn’t come, I think that a profession to which you really belong, and a work that would expand through your own effort, and so grow more interesting to you all the time—I think that this would be a good insurance against loneliness.”
I looked at her quickly as she spoke of loneliness. She was staring off down below where there was a two wheeled, peasant cart lumbering up a winding hill road; but I felt that she didn’t see that, nor even hear the shrill, protesting squeaks that came from the unoiled hubs; and for that moment she came as close to looking tired and faded as I had ever seen her look.
“Sometimes,” she stated, in the crisp way she occasionally spoke, “being an old maid is a lonely business; especially when one is half ill, Jane, and would like a man to tiptoe into the room and knock over the waste basket, and get off a muffled ‘Damn,’ and poke the smelling salts at you, and then wheeze out a loudly whispered, ‘Feeling any better?’”