Frances explained, giving a rapid sketch of her life with the Hardmans during which she had appeared every night on the stage as a boy without the deception being suspected. She had cultivated the tricks and ways of boys, had tried to dress to carry out the impression, and had always succeeded until she had made the mistake of putting on a gypsy girl’s dress a couple of days before.
Carmencita heard her out, but not as a judge. Very early in the story her doubts fled and she succumbed to the mothering instinct in her. She took the American girl in her arms and laughed and cried with her; for her imagination seized on the romance of the story and delighted in its fresh unconventionality. Since she had been born Carmencita’s life had been ordered for her with precision by the laws of caste. Her environment wrapped her in so that she must follow a set and beaten path. It was, to be sure, a flower-strewn one, but often she impotently rebelled against its very orderliness. And here in her arms was a victim of that adventurous romance she had always longed so passionately to know. Was it wonder she found it in her heart to both love and envy the subject of it?
“And this young cavalier—the Señor Bucky, is it you call him?—surely you love him, my dear.”
“Oh, señorita!” The blushing face was buried on her new friend’s shoulder. “You don’t know how good he is.”
“Then tell me,” smiled the other. “And call me Carmencita.”
“He is so brave, and patient, and good. I know there was never a man like him.”
Miss Carmencita thought of one and demurred silently. “I’m sure this paragon of lovers is at least part of what you say. Does he love you? But I am sure he couldn’t help it.”
“Sometimes I think he does, but once—” Frances broke off to ask, in a pink flame: “How does a lover act?”
Miss Carmencita’s laughter rippled up. “Gracious me, have you never had one before.”
“Never.”