Chapter Six.
A Talk about Men—and Pickles.
Stanor Vaughan was deputed to take Pixie in to dinner that evening, an arrangement which at the beginning of the meal appeared less agreeable to him than to his partner. He cast furtive glances at the small, plain, yet mysteriously attractive little girl, who was the sister of the beautiful Mrs Hilliard, the while she ate her soup, and found himself attacked by an unusual nervousness. He didn’t know what to say: he didn’t know how to say it. He had made a bad start, and he wished with all his heart that he could change places with Carr and “rot” with that jolly Miss Ward. All the same, he found himself curiously attracted by this small Miss O’Shaughnessy, and he puzzled his handsome head to discover why.
There was no beauty in the little face, and, as a rule, Stanor, as he himself would have expressed it, had “no use” for a girl who was plain. What really attracted him was the happiness and serenity which shone in Pixie’s face, as light shines through the encircling glass, for to human creatures as to plants the great necessity of life is sun, and its attraction is supreme. Walk along a crowded street and watch the different faces of the men and women as they pass by—grey faces, drab faces, white faces, yellow faces, faces sad and cross, and lined and dull, faces by the thousand blank of any expression at all, and then here and there, at rare, rare intervals, a live face that speaks. You spy it afar off—a face with shining eyes, with lips curled ready for laughter, with arching brows, and tilted chin, and every little line and wrinkle speaking of life.
That face is as a magnet to attract not only eyes, but hearts into the bargain; the passers-by, rouse themselves from their lethargy to smile back in sympathy, and pass on their way wafting mental messages of affection.—“What a dear girl!” they cry, or “woman,” or “man,” as the case may be. “What a charming face! I should like to know that girl.” And the girl with the happy face goes on her way, all the happier for the kindly, thoughts by which she is pursued.
When strangers were first introduced to Pixie O’Shaughnessy they invariably catalogued her as a plain-looking girl; when they had known her for an hour they began to feel that they had been mistaken, and at the end of a week they would have been prepared to quarrel with their best friend if he had echoed their own first judgment. The charm of her personality soon overpowered the physical deficiency.
Stanor Vaughan was as yet too young and prosperous to realise the real reason of Pixie’s attraction. He decided that it was attributable to her trim, jaunty little figure and the unusual fashion in which she dressed her hair. Also she wore a shade of bright flame-coloured silk which made a special appeal to his artistic eye, and he approved of the simple, graceful fashion of its cut.
“Looks as if she’d had enough stuff!” he said to himself, with all a man’s dislike of the prevailing hobble. He pondered how to open the conversation, asking himself uneasily what punishment the girl would award him for his faux pas of the afternoon. Would she be haughty? She didn’t look the kind of little thing to be haughty! Would she be cold and aloof? Somehow, glancing at the irregular, piquant little profile, he could not imagine her aloof. Would she snap? Ah! Now he was not so certain. He saw distinct possibilities of snap, and then, just as he determined that he really must make the plunge and get it over, Pixie leaned confidentially toward him and said below her breath—
“Please talk! Make a start—any start—and I’ll go on. ... It’s your place to begin.”
“Er—er—” stammered Stanor, and promptly forgot every subject of conversation under the sun. He stared back into the girl’s face, met her honest eyes, and was seized with an impulse of confession. “Before I say anything else, I—I ought to apologise, Miss O’Shaughnessy. I’m most abominably ashamed. I’m afraid you overheard my—er—er—w–what I said to Miss Ward at tea—”