“She’s a wonder, Mrs. Massingbyrd”—Drake was full of enthusiasm—“but almost too spectacular for a quiet man. I think Cecilia was really a little shocked.”
I had noted poor little Cecilia’s what-have-we-here-and-whatever-is-the-world-coming-to expression.
There’s nothing quite as conventional as your properly-brought-up young person; and Cecilia was as perfectly turned out a specimen as a wise mother and a good school could accomplish. She was, in fact, the beau ideal of the young person for whom we keep our magazines spotlessly pure, and in whose behalf we cry aloud when a play is not better than it should be.
“She said afterward,” Drake told me, “that she felt as if she’d been reading one of those society papers that haven’t the best reputation in the world.”
“I didn’t know she was up to that,” I remarked.
“Oh, you don’t know Cecilia. She’s really very funny when you get her alone,” Drake protested. “I’ve known her ever since I was knee-high, so, you see, she’s not a bit shy with me. When she was a little kid, I’d no idea she’d turn out so pretty. The trouble is, they get spoiled so soon,” Drake gloomily went on—“spoiled and knowing and worldly.”
“You can’t expect a flower to keep in bud forever.”
“But you can train it to be a nice, sweet, modest, homekeeping plant, or an exotic thing trained for the flower show.”
He puffed at his cigarette. I saw he thought he’d gotten off a good thing. When I’m with Drake I understand only too well the kind of amusement I so frequently afford Felicia. He enhanced the resemblance by now saying:
“I don’t understand women at all!”