“You must tell me! I shall be thoroughly vexed with you if you don’t.”
Then he began to laugh, and she let him, leaning back to watch him with uncertain and speculative blue eyes. After a moment he said:
“You are absolutely unlike any girl I ever heard of. I am trying to get used to it—to adjust things. Will you help me?”
“How?” she asked innocently.
“Well, by telling me”—he looked at her a moment—“your age. You look about nineteen.”
“I am sixteen and a half. I and all my sisters have developed our bodies so perfectly because, until we came to New York last autumn,
we had lived all our lives out-of-doors.” She looked at him with a friendly smile. “Would you really like to know about us?”
“Intensely.”
“Well, there are eight of us: Chlorippe, thirteen; Philodice, fourteen; Dione, fifteen; Aphrodite, sixteen—I am Aphrodite; Cybele, seventeen, married; Lissa, eighteen, married; Iole, nineteen, married, and Vanessa, twenty, married.” She raised one small, gloved finger to emphasize the narrative. “All our lives we were brought up to be perfectly natural, to live, act, eat, sleep, play like primitive people. Our father dressed us like youths—boys, you know. Why,” she said earnestly, “until we came to New York we had no idea that girls wore such lovely, fluffy underwear—but I believe I am not to mention such things; at least they have told me not to—but my straight front is still a novelty to me, and so are my stockings, so you won’t mind if I’ve said something I shouldn’t, will you?”
“No,” he said; his face was expressionless.