"And if she has, Carroll," Mrs. Whyte took him up, with instant sex-championship, "it is nothing to make remarks about. Jean is quite old enough to receive attention, and he is an unexceptionable young man. I don't think it is delicate of you to make comments."
"Who is making the comments?" he demanded good-humoredly.
"Well, you implied comments, and I don't want you to do it when Jean is around. When a girl has no mother and is, besides, as wilful as Jean is,--and she is wilful, Katherine, although I admit she is charming about it, and I should be in love with her myself if I were a man,--the sooner such a girl is married to a steady young man, the better."
"Is the steady young man Mr. Garney?" I asked. The annoyance with which I had observed his prostration before Jean probably betrayed itself in my voice, for Miss Thurston looked up to answer reassuringly.
"Oh, it is not a serious matter. Mr. Garney was a friend of Eugene's, and Jean, bless her heart, would listen to a jointed doll if it could say 'Gene.' Besides, it was Mr. Ellison who asked him to come over this evening. He seems to have quite taken Mr. Garney up,--has him over frequently."
"By the way, Clara," said Mr. Whyte, "I asked Ellison for that contribution to your Day Nursery. You would have done better to ask him yourself. He turned me down hard,--said he had just had to make a thousand dollar payment unexpectedly and was hard up."
The talk shifted, but I confess it had made me uncomfortable. I had had nothing against Garney until I saw him bowled over by Jean, and then I immediately took a violent dislike to him. Yet she probably regarded his devotion merely as pleasantly flattering.
I was uncommonly glad, therefore, to find Jean waiting for me in my office the next afternoon. Fellows was away, and she was sitting at my desk in a stillness that was more than patient. It was tense. An odd-shaped package was clasped in her hands.
"Well, little Story-Book Girl, are you waiting for the prince?" I hailed her. There was something in her sweet absurdities that always made me feel as though we were playing a game.
"I was waiting for you," she said sedately.