On coming in, Mrs. Clibborn for a moment looked at James, quite speechless, her head on one side and her eyes screwing into the corner of the room.
"Oh, how wonderful!" she said, at last "I suppose I mustn't call you Jamie now." She spoke very slowly, and every word sounded like a caress. Then she looked at James again in silent ecstasy. "Colonel Parsons, how proud you must be! And when I think that soon he will be my son! How thin you look, James!"
"And how well you look, dear lady!"
It was understood that everyone must make compliments to Mrs. Clibborn; otherwise she grew cross, and when she was cross she was horrid.
She smiled to show her really beautiful teeth.
"I should like to kiss you, James. May I, Mrs. Parsons?"
"Certainly," replied Jamie's mother, who didn't approve of Mrs. Clibborn at all.
She turned her cheek to James, and assumed a seraphic expression while he lightly touched it with his lips.
"I'm only an old woman," she murmured to the company in general.
She seldom made more than one remark at a time, and at the end of each assumed an appropriate attitude—coy, Madonna-like, resigned, as the circumstances might require. Mr. Jackson came forward to shake hands, and she turned her languishing glance on him.