It was the old story repeated, and Everard felt nettled and annoyed, but managed not to show it, as he replied:
“Who said I did want anything to do with her? But honestly, though, what do you see in her to dislike?”
“Nothing to dislike,” Bee said, “I do not fancy her make-up, that’s all. She looks as if she would wear cotton lace!” and having said what in her estimation was the worst thing she could say of a woman, Beatrice handed him back the picture, which he put up silently, feeling that he could not tell Beatrice of Josey.
He could not tell anybody unless it was Rossie, and he did not believe he cared to do that now, though he would like to show her the picture and hear what she had to say. Would she see dollar jewelry and cotton lace in the face he thought so divine? He meant to try her, and after Beatrice was gone he strolled off to a shaded part of the grounds, where he came upon Rossie watering a bed of fuchsias. She was not sylph-like and graceful, or clad in airy muslin, like Beatrice. She was unformed and angular, and her dress was a dark chintz, short enough to show her slender ankles, which he had once teasingly called pipe-stems, and her thick boots, which were much too large, for she would not have her feet pinched, and always wore shoes a size and a-half too big. A clean white apron, ruffled and fluted, and a white sun-bonnet, completed her costume. Josephine would have called her “homely,” if she had noticed her at all, and some such idea was in Everard’s mind as he approached her; but when, at the sound of his footsteps, she turned and flashed upon him from beneath the cape bonnet those great, brilliant eyes, he changed his mind, and thought: “Won’t those eyes do mischief yet, when Rossie gets a little older.”
She was glad to see him, and stopped watering her flowers while she inquired after his head, and if Miss Belknap found him.
“Yes, she did,” he said, adding, as he sat down in a rustic chair: “Bee is handsome and no mistake.”
“That’s so,” Rossie replied, promptly, for Bee Belknap’s beauty was her hobby. “She is the handsomest girl I ever saw. Don’t you think so?”
Here was his opportunity, and he hastened to seize it.
“Why, no,” he said, “not the very handsomest I ever saw. I have a photograph of a girl I think prettier. Here she is.” And he passed Josephine’s picture toward Rossie, who set down her watering-pot, and wiping her soiled hands, took it as carefully as if it had been the picture of a goddess.
“Oh, Mr. Everard!” she cried, “she is beautiful; more so than Miss Beatrice, I do believe. Such dreamy eyes, which look at you so kind of—kind of coaxingly, somehow; and such lovely hair! Who is she, Mr. Everard?”