The young ladies downstairs didn't giggle as usual. They avoided each other's eyes. At last Annette said, "Upstart! How dared she speak to me that way!" It was said in an effort to reinstate her superior right to exercise the rack. The green-eyed didn't answer. She looked out of the window. At last she said carelessly, "Going to dress." And Annette was not invited to her room.
The green-eyed stood still just inside her door. She thought of a fat father, and of his code of morals. The mother whom her eyes came from was very distant.
"It has been utterly devilish!" she said loudly. "Utterly. And I did it while I read 'The Mob,' and ranted over it." Then she threw a book across the room, which spelled emotional crisis for her temperament and, this time, reform. Her green eyes were full of healthily ashamed tears.
CHAPTER VI
A HINT OF PINK
Cecilia sat well forward in the parquet seats of an opera house in Boston. Her small hand was curled up in the fat palm of a fat priest. The people who saw this smiled indulgently, then looked again; for the little girl was so pretty, and so happy, and the man's face was unusual.
The curtain had not gone up. They were a good fifteen minutes early.
"You see, Father McGowan-dear," said Cecilia, "it was not just their fault, for I am so different. I am still, but less so.... Then one day they said more than usual while I was reading that Sordello poem. (It isn't interesting, is it?)" Father McGowan smiled and shook his head. "And I thought I just couldn't stand it. I was so miserable that I even thought of taking the veil!" Father McGowan laughed suddenly. Cecilia looked at him with questioning eyes. "Go on, dear," he said gently, "and excuse a bad-mannered old priest."
She squeezed his thumb and continued: "Well, it was that day I decided to go home. I decided I could not be a lady, I mean I could not acquire a savoir faire (that means a natural swellness)," explained Cecilia. Father McGowan nodded. His eyes twinkled. "So," said Cecilia, "I took all my money, and put on my hat and sneaked out. Then I walked down the block and across the Park. I saw a baby in the Park, a little girl, and she makes me think of Johnny when he was little and I took care of him. Then I thought of maw, and how she wanted me learned, I mean taught, and I went back. I am not very brave, and I wanted to cry dreadfully. I got in the hall, and there was Mrs. De Pui. She looked awfully cold, and she said, 'May I ask where you have been, Cecilia?' and then, that green-eyed girl I hated broke right in and said, 'I had a slight headache, and I asked her to post a letter for me, Mrs. De Pui. I hope you don't mind.' The green-eyed girl is very rich, and so Mrs. De Pui said so sweetly that she hadn't minded at all.
"She always says 'post' instead of 'mail,' Father McGowan-dear. She spent two weeks in London last summer, and she said that the English accent became unconscious, or at least that she used it unconsciously. And she does except when she gets excited or talks fast.