Mrs. Fenlick, telling of it afterwards, said that, for a moment, she did nothing but look with all her eyes; for there on the porch step stood a woman still in the prime of life and beautiful. She was dressed in an India mull of the fashion of a quarter of a century ago, with a lace kerchief folded in a V about the open neck, and fastened with an old-fashioned brooch.
"At her side," said Mrs. Fenlick, "stood one of the loveliest girls off of canvas I have ever seen. She had on a gown of old-fashioned lawn--pale blue with a rose-bud border. She was tall and straight, and the skirt was a little skimpy, and so plain that had she designed it to set off the grace of her figure she could n't have succeeded better. And the face and head!" Mrs. Fenlick used to wax eloquent at this point--"were simply ideal. Hazel, of course, looked as handsome as a picture in her full, dark blue frock of wash silk trimmed with Irish lace, and with that rich color in her cheeks--but that girl's face was simply divine! Just imagine a complexion of pure white, and dark blue eyes--real violet color--black almost in her pretty excitement of welcoming us, and the loveliest golden brown hair just plaited and puffed a little at the temples, and a braid, that big--" Mrs. Fenlick generally put her two delicate wrists together at this point,--"that fell below her waist fully half a yard! I never saw such hair!"
Mrs. Fenlick used to pause for breath at this point, and then add, "Well, the whole thing was too lovely to be described. Of course, we ate--lots; for that ride and the air were enough to make a saint hungry in Lent, but I was only dimly conscious of ever so many good things I was eating, for that face fascinated me. And manners! Just as if those two women had had nothing to do all their lives but entertain royalty!
"I had sense enough, however, to notice that Jack Sherrill said very little and ate a great deal. I counted twelve rolls--of course they were small--for one thing; and I don't blame him,--I wanted more. Well, the whole thing was perfect--the valley and the great mountains were just in front of the porch, and everything harmonized. Even that lovely girl had a bunch of purple-blue pansies at her belt and a few in the bit of cotton lace at her throat; and the sunset and the mountains matched them--as if she had had the whole thing made to order."
Mrs. Fenlick always ended with, "I 've got one bone to pick with that dear Doctor Heath--a mountain sanatorium! I 'd be willing, almost, to get nervous prostration to be sent up there.
"But oh! you should have seen Maude Seaton!" And thereupon, Mrs. Fenlick would go off into a fit of laughter at the remembrance. "She was looking about for the 'rigid sunbonnet,' as she called it, of the day before, and did n't hear when Rose Blossom spoke to her; and when she did realize that the two were one and the same, her look was the kind 'Life' likes to get hold of, you know.
"As for Jack Sherrill," Mrs. Fenlick concluded in her most serious manner, "I have my own thoughts about some things." More than that she would not say, for fear it might get back to Maude Seaton's ears.
Jack, too, had his own thoughts about some things--and kept them to himself.
XII
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