Miss Townsend’s warm friendship had been both a personal boon and a social asset to the not-too-contented English girl. It stood for a great deal in Washington. The half-aristocrat in the girl thrilled and was grateful to the entire aristocrat of the old Southern woman.
But it was not enough. She envied other girls—not what they were, but what they had—and, because of what they had, where they might untrammeled go, what they might untrammeled do. She realized how generously and gladly good her cousins were to her. But she felt that a degrading smirch of “service” clung to her, as the smirch of restricted means clung to her garments. “I Serve” was not Ivy Gilbert’s motto, and—because of the plebeian strain in her veins—she had no sense that of all mottoes it is the highest and proudest. She felt her life dull. She was ripe for adventure.
Sên King-lo’s violets had done more to reëstablish her in her own raw esteem than all Miss Julia Townsend’s warm friendship. From resenting those innocent violets, she abruptly came to value them because two feather-headed girls with great purses at their service had so envied her them. Sên King-lo—a Chinese—had put her on her feet. Her attitude to him was not altered, not modified. But she was girlishly, if cheaply, elated to have what other girls wished for and schemed for and couldn’t get. She did not place the violets more conspicuously in her room when she went down to it, it never occurred to her to tuck a few of them in her belt when she changed for dinner. But she threw them a kindlier glance as she tidied her hair. Perhaps she ought to say some sort of “thank you.” And the next day, after church, she did. She wrote Mr. Sên a note. She wrote merely:
Dear Mr. Sên King-lo:
How kind of you to remember—with such violets—our meeting at Miss Townsend’s. Thank you for them.
Yours sincerely,
I. R. Gilbert.
It looked wrong, she thought, as she scanned it. And after a little consideration she rewrote it—leaving out the word “Yours,” and writing her Christian names in full. The initials had looked curt. One didn’t say “Thank you” curtly—if one said it at all.
She posted the note herself when she took Blanche and Dick for their Sunday afternoon stroll.
She wondered if he’d reply to her note, and ask if he might call. She hoped not. But she’d not mind Lucille and Molly knowing it—if he did.