“Would you like me to tell you a story?” asked Flora.
Bonnie May looked at her swiftly, incredulously. “No!” she said. She burst out into riotous laughter. “I’m not an infant,” she explained.
Flora flushed. “Very well,” she said gently. Yet she lingered in the room a little while. She put some of Victor’s masculine decorations out of sight. She adjusted the blind. She was about to extinguish the light when she looked again at the strange guest.
The child’s eyes were fixed upon her widely, wonderingly.
“You lovely thing!” said Bonnie May.
“Good night, dear!” said Flora. And then she knew that the child wished to speak to her, and she went over and bent above the bed. “What is it, Bonnie May?” she asked.
The child stared before her in silence for a moment and then the words came. “I wished so much that she would love me!” she said. “I tried so hard....”
Flora slipped her hand under the guest’s head. “I’ll tell you a secret,” she whispered. “If she hadn’t cared for you, she would have been quite polite; she would have been wonderfully gracious. She was ungracious and unkind because—because she loved you, dear. It seems absurd, doesn’t it? But I know.”
It was an absurd theory, perhaps; yet there was certainly needed some explanation of Mrs. Baron’s course later in the evening.