“You took a time!—Phonin’ her what?” He scowled, dominating the girl, “Huh?”
The girl argued, “I’d got to tell her sump’n, ain’t I, Jimmy? I told her I was goin’ to a show with a gerl fren’—”
“Some friend,” said the sailor, laughed at himself and tramped off with his girl under an arm. The girl’s cheap suit of beryl cloth shook out a scent of cinnamon. Mark sighed; she was young and pretty and shouldn’t lie to her mother about men. But perhaps her mother was bad tempered, illiberal. Perhaps the flat was crowded with a preposterous family and exuded this slim thing often, hoping a fragment of pleasure. A man couldn’t be critical. Mark went to meet Gurdy and immediately forgot all discomforts in seeing that the boy had grown an inch, that the lashes about his dark blue eyes were blackening, in hearing him admit that he was glad to be at home again.
Gurdy’s schoolmates had sisters at Miss Thorne’s, it seemed, and Mark waited, fretting, through the Christmas holidays until his broker wrote that Miss Thorne would be pleased to have Margot as a pupil. Miss Converse, the governess, asked Mark bluntly how he had managed this matter.
“You Americans are extraordinary,” she said, “You’re so—so essentially undemocratic. It’s shocking. But we must get Margot some decent frocks directly.”
The bill for Margot’s massed Christmas clothes lay on his desk. Mark started, protesting, “But—”
“I’ve been meaning to talk of this for some time,” said the governess.
“Her clothes?”
“Her clothes.—My people were quite rich, you know, and I had things from Paris but really—O, really, Mr. Walling, you mustn’t let her have every pretty frock she sees! I must say you’ve more taste than most women—quite remarkable. But what will there be left for the child when she comes out?”
He wanted to answer that no frock devised of man could make Miss Converse other than a bulky, angular female but gave his meek consent to authority. He resented the dull serges and linens of Margot’s school dress and Sunday became precious because he saw her in all glory, flounced in rose and sapphire. She was a miracle; she deserved brilliancies of toned silk to set off the pale brown of her skin, the crisp thickness of her hair. But in June on the Cedric he heard one woman say to another, “Positively indecent. Like a doll,” when he walked the decks with Margot and the other woman’s, “But she’s quite lovely,” didn’t assuage that tart summary of Margot’s costume. An elderly actress told him, “My dear boy, you mustn’t overdo the child’s clothes,” and a fat lady from Detroit came gurgling to ask where he bought things for Margot. He knew this creature to be the wife of a motor king and looked down at her thoughtfully.