“Now you’ve raised yourself, if possible, several inches in Helen’s estimation,” her husband said with a laugh.
Mrs. Trelawney made no remark. She took the photograph gently from Stevens, and, re-crossing the room, put it in its place. There was the suggestion of a caress in the little touch with which she settled the frame, before she returned to her seat.
Then she took up her work, and bent over it a moment without speaking.
“I’m so glad,” she said presently,—and as she raised her head, Stevens thought he detected a trace of tears; “and she’ll be so glad you think well of her book. You must meet her again. I will arrange it. She hasn’t forgotten you. Why, it was you who first praised her work, don’t you remember?”
PART I
CHAPTER I
Thirteen or fourteen years before the afternoon when Bridget Ruan’s novel was discussed in Mrs. Trelawney’s sitting-room, she and Bridget were school-girls at Eastchester.
Saturday was a holiday at Myrtle Lodge,—Miss Brownrigg’s boarding-house for the Eastchester High School girls,—and tennis was in full swing in the school-garden behind the house.
“Play!” “Forty-love!” “Vantage all!” came shrilly from the tennis court. On a side grass-plot, whose trampled, badly kept turf bore witness to the violence of the game, rounders was being played by the little ones, who screamed themselves hoarse, and danced madly in a frenzy of excitement as one small figure after another flew round the course, and avoided the savagely aimed ball.
Several of the older girls strolled quietly along the gravel paths, with arms interlaced, whispering together in the peculiarly confidential “penny-mystery” fashion of school-girls.