Merriam responded awkwardly:
"How do you do, Miss----"
"'Miss Jennie' will do," interrupted Jennie.
(Merriam remembered uncomfortably how Mollie June had hit upon a similar "compromise.")
"I ain't partial to 'Higgins,'" Jennie added. "I'm thinking of changing it to 'Montmorency.' Wouldn't 'Jennie Montmorency' be nice, Mr. Rockwell?"
"I don't think it fits very well," said Rockwell. "You'd better change it to Simpson."
Jennie coloured. She coloured easily, as Merriam was to learn. Now that she had turned again to Rockwell he had a chance to look at her face. She was an exceedingly pretty blonde. Her throat was attractively rounded, her shoulders also. Those shoulders might be unpleasant when she was older and stouter, but at present they were charming. Her chin and cheeks were also daintily full--quite the opposite of Margery Milton's. The cheeks were pink, slightly heightened with rouge perhaps but not with paint. The eyes were softly, brightly blue. The hair fair and smoothly wavy, if one may attempt to express a nuance by combining contradictory terms. In short, she was, as some of her admirers undoubtedly expressed it, "not a bit hard to look at."
For a moment Jennie's colour flooded. Then came her retort to Rockwell:
"Mind your own business," she said.
The words were sharp, but somehow the tone was not. The voice was still soft and--warm. It is the only word. It was the voice one might attribute to a kitten, if a kitten were gifted with articulate speech.