“Oh, Lanny, you were such a darling about Marcel — now you must manage to be it again! Kurt is the best friend you have, or he will be if you'll let him. I know what you think — everybody will say it — that I'm old enough to be his mother; but you've always said that Kurt was older than his years, and you know that I'm much too young for mine. Kurt is twenty-two, and I'm only just thirty-seven — that's the honest truth, dear, I don't have to fib about it.”
Lanny couldn't keep from laughing, seeing this good sou! desperately defending herself against all the gossips she had ever known. And taking a year or so from her own age and adding it to Kurt's!
“It's all right, dear. I was a little taken aback at first.”
“You don't have to feel that you've lost either your mother or your friend, Lanny. We will both be to you just what we were before, if you will forgive us and let us.”
“Yes, Beauty, of course.”
“You mustn't think that Kurt seduced me, Lanny!”
The youth discovered himself laughing even more heartily. “Bless your dear heart! I'd be a lot more apt to think that you seduced Kurt!”
“Don't make fun of me, Lanny — it's deadly serious to both of us. You must understand what a gap there's been in my life ever since your father left me — or since I made him leave me. You'll never know what it cost me.”
“I've tried to guess it many times,” said the youth, and put his arm about her. “Cheer up, old dear, it's perfectly all right. Come to think of it, it's a brilliant idea, and I'm ashamed of my stupidity that I didn't think of it. Are you two going to marry?”
“Oh, that would be ridiculous, Lanny! What would people say? I'd be robbing the cradle!”