I was anxious to appear at my best before St. Vidal. It was very exciting, this having a beau. I would have enjoyed it much more, however, but for the interfering inquisitiveness of my sisters, Ada and Ellen, who never failed to ask me each time I had been out with him, whether he had “proposed” yet or not.
Ellen was running up the stairs, and now she burst into our room excitedly, with a package in her hand.
“Look, Marion! Here’s your present. He wouldn’t stop—just left it, and he said, with such a Frenchy bow—whew! I don’t like the French!—‘Pour Mamselle Marion, avec mes compliments!’” and Ellen mimicked St. Vidal’s best French manner and voice.
I opened the package. Oh, such a lovely box of paints—a perfect treasure!
“Just exactly what I wanted!” I cried excitedly, looking at the little tubes, all shiny and clean, and the new brushes and palette.
Ada was sitting reading by the window, and now she looked up and said:
“Oh, did that French wine merchant give that to Marion?”
She cast a disparaging glance at the box, and then, addressing Ellen, she continued:
“Marion is disgustingly old for sixteen, but, of course, if he gives her presents” (he had never given me anything but candy before) “he will propose to her, I suppose. Mama married at sixteen, and I suppose some people—” Ada gave me another look that was anything but approving—“are in a hurry to get married. I shall never marry till I am twenty-five!” Ada was twenty.
This time, Ellen, who was eighteen, got the condemning look. Ellen was engaged to be married to an American editor, who wrote to her every day in the week and sometimes telegraphed. They were awfully in love with each other. Ellen said now: