'My dear mother,' she went on, 'I am to dine with him to-night. Hilda is to dine with him to-night. You are to dine with him to-night. It is to be a family party. He will bring us all to reason—to a bag full of reasons.'
'Elsie, this seems to me to be mirth misplaced.'
'No—no—in its right place—reasons all in a row and on three shelves, labelled and arranged and classified.'
'You talk in enigmas.'
'My dear mother'—yet that morning the dear mother would not speak to the dear daughter—'I talk in enigmas and I sing in conundrums. I feel like an oracle or a Delphic old woman for dark sayings.'
She ran away, slamming the door after her. Her mother heard her singing in her studio all to herself. 'Can she be in her right mind?' she asked anxiously. 'To marry a Pauper—to receive the admonition of her guardian—and such a guardian—and to come home singing. 'Twould be better to lock her up than let her marry.'
CHAPTER VII
SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENS
Mr. Dering lay back in his chair, gazing at the door—the unromantic office door—through which Elsie had just passed. I suppose that even the driest of old bachelors and lawyers may be touched by the sight of a young girl made suddenly and unexpectedly happy. Perhaps the mere apparition of a lovely girl, dainty and delicate and sweet, daintily and delicately apparelled, so as to look like a goddess or a wood-nymph rather than a creature of clay, may have awakened old and long-forgotten thoughts before the instincts of youth were stifled by piles of parchment. It is the peculiar and undisputed privilege of the historian to read thoughts, but it is not always necessary to write them down.