Evelyn has a woman come to do it each week, if she can’t get down to Elizabeth Varden’s. And she squawls--there are no other words for this--while it is being done. But her eyebrows are arched and beautifully shaped. I told Mr. Kempwood how she yelled, as I suggested the eyebrow theory. He laughed a good deal and said maybe I was right. Then he said I really oughtn’t to tell him things like that, and, although I didn’t see why I shouldn’t, I said I would not.
Then he asked me to sit down, and I did (and even I wanted to stay sitting, for his chairs are wonderfully sittable), after which he rang and we had tea, and since there were no plain bread and butter sandwiches I felt no obligation to eat any. I thanked Mr. Kempwood for omitting them, and I ate a good deal and enjoyed myself more than I have since reaching New York.
I told him a lot about Uncle Frank and Bradly-dear and even about Willy Jepson. And he asked me whether I thought I would marry Willy, and I said not if anyone else asked me. And then I had some more tea.
He asked me how old I was, at that point, and when I said sixteen, he was surprised. I don’t seem it. I know that. . . . That is one reason Amy never has room in the motor for me. I know I humiliate her by my lack of polish. Baseball doesn’t develop much beside muscle and quickness and a certain sort of flash judgment, I have realized lately. But I shall acquire those other things in the three years, of which over a week has passed.
“Where’s the bracelet to-day, Natalie?” Mr. Kempwood asked, after looking at my arms. . . . I wore a gray silk which has short sleeves. It has broad white cuffs and a big flaring white collar, and is pretty. . . . I replied that I thought I wouldn’t wear it, for I knew no one would believe my story.
“I suppose you’re interested in the Mansion?” he questioned further.
I said I was, decidedly.
“Know its history?” he asked.
“In a way,” I answered. “But not as well as I shall. . . . History has never interested me. I didn’t think things that happened to dead people vital, but lately----”
“Well,” he said, “they may not be vital; nothing but food and sleep really is, you know. But the things that have happened are interesting, because they make you think. Beside making you realize what helped to form the great country in which you live. Perhaps you haven’t seen History. Perhaps you’ve just said, ‘In 1776 Washington occupied the Jumel Mansion for some time’; or, ‘On Wednesday, July 3, 1833, Reverend Doctor Bogart married the celebrated Col. Burr and Madam Jumel, widow of the late Stephen Jumel,’ instead of seeing Washington step out of that door and stand on that porch. . . . Probably he watched the burning of New York from there. (A great many people think Nathan Hale started it. New York was then in the hands of the British, and many thought burning it was the thing to do. There are a good many things about Nathan Hale’s story that are still misty. . . .) You repeat dates about a wedding instead of seeing a queer old woman, rouged and smirking, come down the twisting stairs of the Jumel Mansion to meet her groom, who was a tired old man, poor and aware that a gay youth doesn’t leave much precipitate for a comfortable old age. . . . He gained six thousand dollars by that marriage, and she--some more experience with the law, for she divorced him.”