"It's when they gets past the time that females is likely to cast an eye to them that they're dangerous—so madly are they then overcome with love," she asserted.
"I don't think old Scrooge will ever be dangerous," Bessie regretfully demurred. She was much interested. "What do you mean by 'dangerous,' Emily?"
Emily would not descend to detail. She nodded a wise head. "You look out!" she counselled. "And remember, Miss Bessie, I'm always at hand when he's near."
The idea that the elderly draper might suddenly become riotous, gave always a zest to the tête-à-tête which otherwise it might have lacked. She was, truth to tell, a little disappointed to find him after each visit no more alarming than he had been before. She even tried to pique him into an exhibition of the "dangerous" symptom, treating him with the caprice and the disdain she dared not have shown but for Emily's repeated assurance she could play as she liked with him and he would never take offence. The mother, Deleah, even little Franky, had to mind their "P's and Q's" with the man who, as he himself had phrased it, "stood at the back of them." Bessie was on a different plane, she told herself, and could do as she liked.
"I've been bullying your mother about that ill-doing brother of yours," he said. "I thought I'd better say a word or two to you on the same subject."
"Thank you, Mr. Boult. You have forgotten to take off your hat."
He took it off with reluctance, because it concealed the bald top of his head, and without being asked to do so, seated himself in the chair opposite hers.
Every man carries about with him his ideal of what a woman should look like, although he probably changes it a good many times before he arrives at the age, in Emily's opinion, dangerous for a lover. At the mature age of fifty-five, George Boult's ideal happened to be realised by Bessie Day. Fair-skinned she was, and very plump. Her waist was small, exceedingly, as was in accordance with the taste of that day, but her hips and bust were large; there was a promise of a double chin to come later. The necklace of Venus showed alluringly in her full young throat, and in the knuckles of her small white hands were dimples.
"Is that how you pass your days?" George Boult asked her, pointing to the book she still held in her hands.
"Reading? A part of my day. A very good way, too, to pass it. Don't you think so?"