“Who called it?”
“A man. But what am I to wear?”
“Well,” Florence pondered, “you are a youth, a mere boy; that’s the way they think of you. You are to tramp about over the estate.”
“And ride horses. She said so. How I love horses!”
“You are a boy. And you have no mother to guide you.” Florence chanted this. “What would a boy wear? Knickers, a waist, heavy shoes, a cap. You have all these, left from our summer in the northern woods.”
Why not, indeed? This was agreed upon at once. So it happened that when the great car, all a-glitter with gold and platinum trimmings, met her before the opera at the appointed hour, it was as a boy, perhaps in middle teens, garbed for an outing, that the little French girl sank deep into the broadcloth cushions.
“Florence said it would do,” she told herself. “She is usually right. I do hope that she may be right this time.”
Rosemary Robinson had been well trained, very well trained indeed. The ladies who managed and taught the private school which she attended were ladies of the first magnitude. As everyone knows, the first lesson to be learned in the school of proper training is the art of deception. One must learn to conceal one’s feelings. Rosemary had learned this lesson well. It had been a costly lesson. To any person endowed with a frank and generous nature, such a lesson comes only by diligence and suffering. If she had expected to find the youthful Pierre dressed in other garments than white waist, knickers and green cap, she did not say so, either by word, look or gesture.
This put Jeanne at her ease at once; at least as much at ease as any girl masquerading as a boy might be expected to achieve.
“She’s a dear,” she thought to herself as Rosemary, leading her into the house, introduced her in the most nonchalant manner to the greatest earthly paradise she had ever known.