"Ice wouldn't be cool in such a company. You are long past hating any one, I know, but even you would have had some difficulty in keeping yourself charitable if you had heard that young woman's oily insolence to me. She is sure we shall be such friends, for she too is unconventional and fond of improprieties. She would think it a fine lark to be free of a gentleman's house while he was away from it; she is so artless, no one knows what she might not do if she had not dear mamma to watch her. Gushing young thing; she needs such care. She looks twenty-five, but I am prepared to celebrate her eighteenth birthday before the summer passes. I heard her telling Jay to guess how many candles she would have to get for her cake. I am afraid he said more than she thought complimentary, for she changed the subject very quickly, and told him that she had some candy for him in her trunk. He had just had a surfeit of candy, and he told her, to my delight, he didn't want her candy, that he had plenty of his own. Wasn't it nice of him? That's what I call a discriminating child, mamma. It isn't every boy of five who knows a possible stepmother when he sees her. I am proud of Jay. I wish I were as confident of his father's discretion. Poor man, how he will be cajoled! How he will learn to reverence the opinion of Mrs. Eustace, how he will dote on the airy graces of the daughter. I wish you could see them, mamma. They rather affect the attitude of sisters. If it were not for the superior claims of the daughter, I am sure the mother is capable of aspiring to the post herself. I should not wonder if it were left an open question with them, which one of them should have him. Mrs. Eustace certainly is young-looking, but she is stout. The daughter is ridiculously like her; you seem to jump over twenty years as you look from one to the other; the same figure, but a little stouter, the same hair, but a little thinner, the same eyes, but gone a little deeper in, the same complexion, but a little thickened, the same smile, but a little more effort in getting it to come. They are about the same height, and they wreathe their arms about each other, and smile back and forward, and pose and prattle like a vaudeville."
"Really, my dear, you made good use of your time. How many minutes were you in their company, I should like to know?"
"They arrived about twenty minutes before eight,—it is now ten minutes past. That is just how long I have known them."
"Well, dear, for half an hour, I think you are rather venomous. But though I don't take your judgment of them altogether, I wish they hadn't seen fit to accept Mr. Andrews' invitation, or that Mr. Andrews hadn't seen fit to offer them an invitation. Don't let it all bother you, Missy. It has been rather a muddle from the beginning. I think you'll have to make up your mind to let Jay go, though it will be pretty hard."
"Hard!" cried Missy, bitterly. "But of course, I've made up my mind to it. I went through it all that evening on the lawn, when Mr. Andrews told us that they were to come. It is but with one object that he brought them, it will have but one end."
"I don't believe that he brought them with this object, but I acknowledge that it may possibly end in giving the poor little fellow a stepmother. I am afraid he is the sort of man that is easily taken in."
Missy's face expressed scorn.
"Yes, he is just that sort of man, and if he didn't drag poor Jay in with him, I should say I was glad he had got the fate that he deserved."
"Hardly that, Missy. He has always been very nice to you, and I can't think why you feel so towards him. But I've always felt it was a mistake for people to garner up their hearts in other people's children, and I've wished, from the beginning, that you cared less for the boy. Give it up now, dear, and make up your mind to interest yourself in other things."
"That's very easy to say. I've made up my mind so a hundred times in the last week, but it doesn't stay made up, and I shall go on caring for him till he's taken away from me, and a good while after, I'm afraid."