“Oh, Dulcie! That is no sort of ambition for a growing girl!” he laughed; and she laughed, too, watching his every expression out of grey eyes that were her chiefest beauty.
“You’re a little too young to know what you want yet,” he concluded, still smiling. “By the time that bobbed mop of red hair grows to a proper length, you’ll know more about yourself.”
“Do you like it up?” she enquired naïvely.
“It makes you look older.”
“I want it to.”
“I suppose so,” he nodded, noticing the snowy neck which the new coiffure revealed. It was becoming evident to him that Dulcie had her own vanities—little pathetic vanities which touched him as he glanced at the reconstructed first communion dress and the drooping hyacinth pinned at the waist, and the cheap white slippers on a foot as slenderly constructed as her long and narrow hands.
“Did your mother die long ago, Dulcie?”
“Yes.”
“In America?”