“Quite right!” said Patricia shortly. “Of course you couldn’t, you little thing—being the little thing you are!”
“You do see, don’t you, Stephanie dear?” continued Honor anxiously. “I couldn’t take the credit that didn’t belong to me: and if I had waited to explain afterward, I might have got Maria into trouble, when she had done this lovely thing to help me, as she thought.”
“My faith, I do not see at all!” Stephanie spoke doggedly. “Your drawer was at four pins” (à quatre epingles; as we should say “in apple-pie order”) “when our Sister inspected it. What more is required? I think you are all mad together, you Americans and English. And now Maria will get the prize!”
“I sincerely hope she will!” said Honor.
CHAPTER XVI
THE APPLES OF ATALANTA
The day of the Race dawned clear and bright; as perfect a day as heart could desire. Long before the hour the guests began to arrive; fathers, mothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, all in their best, all with shining faces of expectation. The Fête d’Atalante was Prize Day, Class Day, Commencement, all in one, at Pension Madeleine. The garden was in order; in saying that, one says a great deal. For a week past Margoton had been at work with rake, broom, trowel and shears; for a week the girls, in every spare moment, had diligently weeded the brick alleys, snipped off faded leaves and blossoms, tied up vines, etc., etc. The result was a perfection altogether dazzling, said Madame, making her final round of inspection. Let one but observe these bricks! They shone as if—but as if each one had been waxed.
“Parbleu!” said Margoton. “The reason of that, my faith? It is that they have been waxed, saving the honor of Madame.”
The strip of lawn on either side of the broad alley was covered with benches, which filled rapidly as the hour approached. Here was Stephanie’s family, her stout, comfortable father, with frock coat, and double chin; her thin, anxious little mother, whose bead-like eyes were already measuring the paces that must be run, and comparing her child’s legs with those of the other girls. Here were the Marquis and Marquise de la Tour de Provence, very high-nosed and aristocratic, also—it must be confessed—very vacuous in expression. Here was Madame Poirier, Vivette’s mother, in maroon cashmere with an eruption of shiny black buttons along every seam. These buttons had been fashionable some years ago, but were now no longer so, and the good lady had used them, as she fondly imagined, to produce an effect “altogether of gentility.” Here at one side, was a little group that caught the eye at once: a handsome lady, richly dressed, beside her a singularly beautiful girl. Mrs. Damian, entering the garden with Miss Folly, saw them, and made her way toward them at once.
“Desmonds!” she explained to Miss Folly. “I should know a Desmond if I met him in the desert of Sahara; this must be Mrs. Clifford. How do you do, Mrs. Clifford Desmond? I am Mrs. Damian. I came very near marrying your father-in-law a hundred years ago—or perhaps it was only fifty. Is this your elder daughter? I have seen the younger one; knew her for a Desmond across the Public Garden.”