“I wish you’d show me how to do my hair like yours, so that I’d know always which way it was going to wave,” said the girl.
Mrs. Warner smiled. “It’s much prettier to see yours as it is,” she answered. “Cecily, I’ve been thinking about you a good deal. Now that you are through school we must arrange things so that you will be happy. Later on we may travel, but this year your father is tied down in Carrington for most of the year, so I can’t see much ahead except a few weeks in New York with me this fall, a month in the South in the spring and after we get back from New York I thought I had better give a rather large party for you so you could meet people and become an orthodox débutante. Would you like that?”
Cecily looked a little perturbed, but what fear there was seemed to be overlaid with delight.
“I think I’d like it,” she said, “but, mother—you know I don’t dance very well—or know a thing about society.”
“The dancing we shall arrange and the other is no drawback.”
Cecily’s mother came over to lay her slim white hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “Were you happy in the convent?”
“So happy.”
“I want you to be happy outside of it, too. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be. And I want you to be rather close to me until you marry, Cecily. I want you to marry the right sort of man, one who will care for you and protect you.”
“I’ve been thinking about marrying,” said Cecily ingenuously.
Her mother looked at her aghast. “Marrying whom?”