Mrs. Massarene was sad and silent. It was painful to hear one’s own courier say that he would never take service with “gentlefolk.” One never likes to see oneself as others see us.
The poignant horror of that moment as she had seen the imperial wheels flash and rotate through the flying dust was still fresh in her mind, and should have prevented her from ever trusting to her own judgment or forming that judgment from mere appearances. She could still hear the echo of the mocking voice of that prince whom Kenilworth had described as “dead broke” saying to her, as he had said more than once in England: “Not often do you make a mistake; ah no, not often, my very dear madam, not often; but when you do make one—eh bien, vous la faites belle!”
Mrs. Massarene sighed heavily as she sat alone under her tree, her large hands folded on her lap; the lessons of society seemed to her of an overwhelming difficulty and intricacy. How could she possibly have guessed that the great Mrs. Cecil Courcy, who gave tea and bread-and-butter to kings and sang duets with their consorts, was a little shabby, pale-faced being in a deer-stalker’s hat and a worn gray ulster who had disputed in propriâ personâ at the cashier’s office the charge of half a kreutzer on her bill for some iced water?
As she was thinking these melancholy thoughts and meditating on the isolation of her greatness, a big rose-colored bladder struck her a sharp blow on the cheek; and at her involuntary cry of pain and surprise a little child’s voice said pleadingly, “Oh! begs ’oo pardon—vewy muss!”
The rosebud face of Lady Kenilworth’s little daughter was at her knee, and its prettiness and penitence touched to the quick her warm maternal heart.
“My little dear, ’tis nothing at all,” she said, stooping to kiss the child under its white lace coalscuttle bonnet. Boo submitted to the caress, though she longed to rub the place kissed by the stranger.
“It didn’t hurt ’oo, did it?” she asked solicitously, and then she added in a whisper, “Has ’oo dot any sweeties?”
For she saw that the lady was kind, and thought her pretty, and in her four-year-old mind decided to utilize the situation. As it chanced, Mrs. Massarene, being fond of “sweeties” herself, had some caramels in a gold bonbon-box, and she pressed them, box and all, into the little hands in their tiny tan gloves.
Boo’s beautiful sleepy black eyes grew wide-awake with pleasure.
“Dat’s a real dold box,” she said, with the fine instincts proper to one who will have her womanhood in the twentieth century. And slipping it in her little bosom she ran off with it to regain her nurse.