“Suppose she speaks to Jane?” I asked. Amy looked annoyed.
“You have more sensible suggestions that make trouble----!” she complained, but she wrote this addition: “If this is as much as spoke of, I shall leave!” And she said that she was glad I’d thought of it. . . . “They always mention leaving,” she said. “It’s as much a part of modern servants as their uniforms. It gives just the touch.”
And then, feeling very clever, we went to the living-room, where we had lunch on a little table before the fire. There was a man in the dining-room arranging for new hangings, and I was glad, for eating on the small table was fun and cosy. That part of the day was nice.
We talked to Ito as he served, and told him how tired we got of nourishing food, and asked him if there wasn’t something sweet in the kitchen, beside the blanc-mange which aunt had ordered for us. He thought so and vanished, to return with fruit cake and meringues, which had nothing to go in them, but which we accepted with gratitude. Altogether it was a charming hour.
Amy grew confidential. I suppose the fire-light and the closed-in feeling that the rain pattering on the windows gave us made that; and she told me of her ambitions. She is going to marry a millionaire who worships the ground she walks on, and live on Fifth Avenue in the biggest house there, and have Henry Hutt paint her portrait, because she loves his kind of art. And she said her husband would have her portrait in a little room all lined with pink velvet and put violets under it (the portrait, not the velvet) every day. She has it all arranged. He is to be a broker, and after coming home from down-town he will go in that room, which Amy calls his “Heart Sanctuary,” and kneel before her picture. I asked why he didn’t kneel before her, and she said she’d be off playing auction or at the matinée. Then she ate her third meringue and stared absently into the fire.
“Life is what you make it,” she said; and then: “He is going to wear a checked suit and a red tie.”
I couldn’t see him kneeling in that pink room in that rig, but I didn’t say anything.
“What are you going to do with your future?” she questioned, after an interval of silence.
I told her I only asked to be allowed to climb fences and ride and fish, and stay at home in Queensburg. Then I realized I had not been tactful, and tried to fix it up, but I couldn’t, and our nice time was spoiled. Amy told me that I was frightfully gauche and embarrassed her and Evelyn a lot, and as for my staying at home--it was only kindness of them to take me out of it! And then she spoke of my new clothes, which I did not think was nice, and told me just how much Aunt Penelope had paid for them. I felt myself growing white, as you do when you are very hurt. And I told her I would some day pay for those clothes, after which she stopped speaking and looked embarrassed.
“Don’t worry about that,” she said in a moment. “Mother expected to have to do that for you. She said she knew your things would be frightful.”