“Of course I heard,” said Pixie, staring. “What could you expect? Not four yards away, and a great bass voice! I’m not deaf. But there’s no need to feel sorry. I thought you put it very nicely, myself!”
“Nicely!” He stared in amaze. “Nicely! How could you possibly—”
“You said I had given Esmeralda my share. I’d never once looked at it in that way; neither had any one else. And it’s so soothing. It gives me a sort of credit, don’t you see, as well as a pride.”
She was speaking honestly, transparently honestly; it was impossible to doubt that, with her clear eyes beaming upon him, her lips curling back in laughter from her small white teeth. There was not one sign of rancour, of offence, of natural girlish vanity suffering beneath a blow.
“Good sport!” cried Stanor, in a voice, however, which could be heard by no one but himself. His embarrassment fell from him, but not his amazement; that seemed to increase with each moment that passed. His glance lingered on Pixie’s face, the while he said incredulously—
“It’s—it’s wonderful of you. I’ve known heaps of girls, but never one who would have taken it like that. You don’t seem to have a scrap of conceit—”
“Ex-cuse me,” corrected Miss O’Shaughnessy. For the first time she seemed to be slightly ruffled, as though the supposition that she could be bereft of any quality, or experience common to her kind was distinctly hurtful to her pride. “I have! Heaps! But it’s for the right things. I’ve too much conceit to be conceited about things about which I’ve no right to be conceited. I’m only conceited about things about which I’m—”
“Conceited enough to know are worth being jolly well conceited about,” concluded Stanor, and they laughed together in merry understanding.
“That’s it,” agreed Pixie, nodding. “I used to be conceited about being plain, because it was so unusual in our family that it was considered quite distinguished, and my father used to boast at the hunt that he had the ugliest child in the county, though it was himself that said it. But,” she gave the slightest, most ephemeral of sighs, “I’ve lived through that. I’m conceited now about—other things.”
“Lots of them, I’m sure. There must be lots,” agreed Stanor, with a sincerity which condoned the banality of the speech. “About your good nature for one thing, I should say, and your generosity in forgiving a blundering man, and your jolly disposition which makes you smile when another girl would have been wild. I can understand all those and a lot more, but, just as a matter of curiosity, I should like to know what are you conceited about most?”