“Mollie, dear, do you know I was once foolish enough to ask this gay bird to go with me to the Feegees, and she had the good sense to refuse. Wouldn’t she have cut a fine figure out there with all her finery and fashion?”
“Yes, I know,” Mollie said faintly, while Bee rejoined, laughingly: “You ought to be very thankful that I preferred fashion to Feegees; such a life as I should have led you.”
“You would have died,” Mollie rejoined, and the conversation on that subject ceased.
Theo had set things right for them all by his plain and playful allusion to the past, which, from that allusion, would be supposed to have no part in his present life, and to have left no mark upon him. He seemed very happy with his children, and very kind to his wife, who was a different creature with his strong, mesmeric influence near her.
“I believe she’d be passably good-looking if she were decently dressed. She has good hair, not bad features, and rather fine eyes; but where are the glasses, she surely wore them away?” Beatrice thought, and at last she ventured to say: “Excuse me, Mrs. Morton, but did you not wear glasses on shipboard six years ago?”
“Yes,” was the reply, “my eyes were weak from over-study, trying to master the language, and I was obliged to wear glasses for a time. I laid them off after Trixey was born. Theo never liked me in them.”
As the short March afternoon was wearing to a close Beatrice soon rose to go, after first asking how long the Mortons intended to remain in the city.
“We have written to mother to know if she can receive us,” Mrs. Morton said, “and shall go as soon as we get her answer. I am afraid we shall crowd and worry her too much, for the house is small, and she and father are old and poor, and may not want us all.”
“Never mind, Mollie,” Theo said, “don’t kill the bear till you see it;” then, turning to Beatrice, he added, not complaining, but laughingly, “Mollie has a great way of borrowing trouble, while I wait till it comes.”
“It’s my poor health; my nerves; I can’t help it,” the invalid said, with a quiver in her voice and about her lips.