“My dear,” she said, solemnly, “do you really care for him a particle?”
“Who—Max? Of course I do. He is the best fellow I know, and was so good to me out there in the wilderness. There was no one out there to compare me with, so I suppose I loomed up big when compared with the average squaw. But everything is different here. I did not know how different. I know now, however, and I won’t let him go on making a mistake.”
“Oh, Montana!” cried the little lady, pleadingly.
Just then a maid entered with two cards, at which she glanced with a dismay that was comical.
“Margaret and Max! Why, is it not strange they should call at the same time, and at a time when—”
“When I was pairing them off so nicely, without their knowledge,” added the girl. “Have them come up here, won’t you? It is so much more cozy than that very elegant parlor. And I always feel as if poor Max had been turned out of his home since I came.”
So they came to the little sitting room—pretty, dark-eyed Margaret, with her faultless manners and her real fondness for Miss Seldon, whom she kissed three times.
“For I have not seen you for three days,” she explained, “and those two are back numbers.” Then she turned to ’Tana and eyed her admiringly as they clasped hands.
“You look as though you had stepped from a picture of classic Greek,” she declared. “Where in that pretty curly head of yours do you find the ideas for those 319 artistic arrangements of form and color? You are an artist, Montana, and you don’t know it.”
“I will begin to believe it if people keep telling me so.”