“He’s delicate,” answered Telemac. “Continuous nursing and doctoring would make an invalid of Atlas, himself.”
“The Le Roy-Jones, of Castlewood Manor, Virginia,” began the languid personage of that name with an elegant drawl,—but the elements themselves prevented her finishing her aristocratic recital, and Mrs. Le Roy-Jones became the sport of the breezes. A mischievous little puff of wind lifted the brim of her youthful hat, with invisible fingers plucked one of her false curls from her hair, and blew it along the deck.
“Oh, mother, why will you wear those things?” exclaimed Marie-Jeanne blushing, as she chased the wisp of hair followed by Feargus and the Motor Maids, all of them glad to find something to laugh at.
Her mother clinched her bony hands angrily.
“Insolent girl!” she said, under her breath.
Miss Campbell turned coldly away. There was something very pathetic to her about this poor battered creature, who looked, as Nancy had said, as if she had been hanging on a hook with her clothes in an old forgotten closet for a long time, so faded she was and full of wrinkles. But when she scolded her unhappy daughter, Miss Campbell could not endure her.
“She is a splendid young woman, ma’am,” said Telemac Kalisch. “She has a fine, serious face, and if she were allowed to pursue her bent, she would probably grow beautiful.”
“Pray, what do you mean by my daughter’s ‘tastes’?” demanded the shabby mother. “She has no bent, so far as I know.”
“That is because you have never made your daughter’s acquaintance. She is very much attached to something you have never taken the trouble to notice. But in your heart, you know what it is.”
Mrs. Jones gave him an embarrassed glance and hurried away.