"Some time," said Mr. Floyd, "I want to read every word she wrote, but these letters are enough now: I can bear nothing more." And even these he could not well endure until my mother had talked them over with him again and again.
The quiet, happy life which we led in these days suited Mr. Floyd's health, and there was no recurrence of the alarming symptoms which had filled me with dread a few months before. "I begin to think," he remarked often, "that by continuing this life, as simple as that which a bird leads flying from bough to bough, I am to grow stout and elderly, and go on getting gray, rubicund, with an amplitude of white waistcoat, until I am seventy years of age or so. My father and mother each died young, but both by accident as it were: the habit of both families was of long life and great strength. I confess I should like to live for a good many years yet. I suppose Helen will marry by and by. I should like to be a witness of her happiness, rounded, full, complete, sanctified by motherhood. Think, Mary, of my holding Helen's children on my knee!"
"I think often of grandmotherhood myself," my mother replied. "It is a symptom of advancing age, James."
I heard the talk, but Helen was far enough from guessing what plans her father was forming for his ultimate satisfaction, and I could fancy her superb disdain at such mention. It was easy for me to see that her love for her father was quite enough for her: she invested it with all the charming prettinesses that a dainty coquette uses with her lover. She was arch, gay, imperious, tender, all in a breath: I confess that I often felt that, let her once put forth her might, not Georgy Lenox could be more winning, sweet and seductive. But all her tenderness was for her father: with me she was sometimes proud and shy, sometimes wearing the manner of a loving little child. I often called her "little sister" in those days, and so, and in no other wise, I held her. When she was kind, we had pleasant talks together: when she treated me with coolness and reserve, I laughed and let her go. Her father needed her, and I did not; and I paid scant attention to her little caprices, although I scolded her for them now and then.
"Do you wish to treat me as you treat Thorpe?" I would ask. "I am not a tame cat yet."
"How do I treat Mr. Thorpe?" she inquired. "I intend to treat him as I do the man who places my chair."
"You don't always manage that, my dear child. For instance, last night, when you were going to sing, you showed plainly that you were vexed at his officiousness in opening the piano and placing your stool for you, and declined singing at once. Now, had Mills performed those slight services you would have said coolly, 'Thank you, Mills,' and not have wasted a thought on the matter more than if some interior mechanism had raised the cover of the instrument."
"But Mr. Thorpe looks at me as Mills would never dare to look. He thrusts his personality upon me," exclaimed Helen in a small fury. "Let him pay his compliments to Georgy: I do not want them. Think of it! he called me Miss Helen this morning!"
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him nothing: I looked——"