Now every now and then while Barbara worked she glanced toward Eugenia. It was difficult to recognize the severe and energetic Miss Peabody in this white-faced, quiet girl. For Eugenia had never since the beginning of their acquaintance looked so young. For one thing, she was wearing a beautiful violet cashmere kimono Mildred had presented her during their stay in Paris. She had never worn it until now. At least the gift had not come directly from Mildred or Eugenia would never have accepted it. But Mrs. Thornton had written from New York asking that Mildred’s new friends receive some little gifts from her, and Mildred had chosen four kimonos. They were too pretty for nursing use, so the other girls had been enjoying theirs in the evenings alone at home.
Eugenia had never consented to relax even to that extent when work was over and there was no possibility of company. Now, however, her costume was not of her own choosing, for after Barbara had taken a cup of coffee to her room and persuaded her into drinking it, she had dressed her in the new kimono without asking permission. Also she had brushed and plaited Eugenia’s heavy hair into two long braids.
“Funny for a New England old maid to be able to look like an Italian Madonna simply because her hair is down and her head aches,” Barbara thought to herself after one of her quick glances at Eugenia.
She made rather a fetching picture herself, but Barbara was at present entirely unconscious. Simply because it happened to be the most useful costume she owned for the purpose, she was clad in a French peasant’s smock of dark-blue linen, and wore a little white cap at a rakish angle on top of her brown curls. Her hair was now sufficiently long to twist into a small knot at the nape of her neck, where delicate tendrils were apt to creep forth like the new growth on a vine.
Finally Eugenia, opening her eyes and catching sight of Barbara, at this moment on tip toes in her effort to dust the tall mantel-shelf, said unexpectedly:
“You are very pretty, Barbara dear, and just the kind of a little woman that men are apt to care for. I wonder if you ever think of marrying, or do you mean to go on nursing all your life? Now and then I have thought that Dick——”
But her sentence was interrupted by Barbara’s dropping the candlestick which she was dusting and then turning to stare at her companion.
“Why, Eugenia, I thought you were asleep,” she began reproachfully. Then showing the dimple which she so resented, she added slyly, “But what on earth made you speak on such a subject? I never dreamed that you ever had a thought of such a thing in your life.”
Barbara bit her lips. No wonder Eugenia considered her a goose, for certainly she seemed possessed of the fatal gift of saying the wrong thing.
Eugenia was no longer pale. Indeed, a wave of hot color had turned her entire face crimson.