[CHAPTER XXV]
BERENICE MORTON’S ARRIVAL
“Stand over there, Berenice, and let me look at you all I want,” said Bess, as she and her friend entered the living room.
Mrs. West, after the return from Polson, where she and Bess had gone together to meet their visitor, had slipped quietly away that the two young women might be alone during the first moments.
Berenice Morton did as requested and walked to the far end of the room. Bess clasped her hands across her breast as she feasted her eyes upon her friend. Tall, even taller than Bess herself, and graceful as a swaying reed, she moved with sweet dignity. As she turned about her large, grey eyes, with their dark lashes, her rosy cheeks, aflame with a new excitement, her lips curved in a sweet smile, made a picture, set in a frame of burnished light hair.
“Well—Bess, dear, isn’t this enough?” laughingly questioned Berenice, when she felt Bess had inspected her sufficiently.
“How your glasses change your looks! They make you seem so dignified that I really wonder if you are the same girl that used to help me play some of those dreadful pranks. Your hair, which you always declared was just like mine, is ever so much lighter, and—dear me!—so much ‘kinkier.’ Oh! If I only were g-r-a-n-d like you!”
“If I were only s-w-e-e-t like you!” replied Miss Morton, as again they embraced each other.
“Berenice, of course, I have ten million things to tell you, three of ‘whom’ are very important. But first you must get freshened up and rested. Then, after luncheon, I’ll take you to my den—’way off along the lake, where no one dares to go ’ceptin’ me,” she said, in a low, sepulchral tone, which might make one surmise all kinds of terrible things.
“Bess! don’t take me if there is any danger of mountain lions, or bears, or—or—Indians. Father made me promise to come back with my hair all on and with my body intact,” Berenice tried to say seriously, but her sparkling eyes belied her.