"Why didn't you?" Sally retorted, still chuckling a little.
Fox looked blank. "Didn't I? Is it possible that I omitted to state such an obvious truth?"
Sally nodded. She was looking past him. "Oh," she cried quickly, "there's Henrietta."
"Another obvious truth," he murmured, more to himself than to Sally. "There's Henrietta."
Henrietta came quickly forward; indeed, she was running. And Sally met her. Sally was quick enough, but she seemed slow in comparison with Henrietta.
"Sally, dear!" exclaimed Henrietta, kissing her on both cheeks. "How glad I am to see you! You can't imagine." Which was a statement without warrant of fact. If there was one thing that Sally could do better than another, it was to imagine. "Come up with me and show me my room. I've an ocean of things to say to you. Fox will excuse us, I know."
"Fox will have to, I suppose," he said, "whether he wants to or not."
"You see," laughed Henrietta, "he knows his place."
"Oh, yes," Fox agreed. "I know my place."
Sally had not seen Henrietta for four or five years. Henrietta was a lively girl, small and dainty and very pretty. Her very motions were like those of a butterfly, fluttering with no apparent aim and then alighting suddenly and with great accuracy upon the very flower whose sweetness she had meant, all along, to capture; but lightly and for a moment. The simile is Sally's, not mine, and she thought of it at the instant of greeting her; in fact, it was while Henrietta was kissing her, and she could not help wondering whether Henrietta—But there she stopped, resolutely. Such thoughts were uncharitable.