"OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES"
"That excuse about inspiration was all very well," said Dora, rubbing
away hard at an obstinate spot on a pink silk blouse, "but I would give
a good deal to know why he _really_ went off in such a violent hurry,
Bee."
"Well, I fancy he does not get on too well with Mr. Gowan," said Bee.
"It always seemed to me when I saw them together that the one despised
the other for brewing beer and the other despised the one for brewing
books."
"Why, Bee," said the other girl admiringly, "that was almost clever. I
wish I could think of that sort of thing to say."
"Must be evil communications," laughed Bee. "I never used to be accused
of such a thing as cleverness. I must tell Mr. Kinross he's contagious."
"But why do you suppose he went?" persisted Dora. "I don't think he
bothered much over Mr. Gowan; he just used to avoid him. And you can
see he likes Mrs. Gowan well enough, though I suppose not so well as
that fat sister he lives with. What _could_ have driven him away?"
Bee, with a little iron that she heated at a gas ring on her washstand,
was carefully smoothing out some crumpled chiffons and ribbons.
For it was wet weather on the mountains, and in the big hotel where the
Gowans were staying the two girls whom Hugh was pleased privately to
call "little pets" had foregathered in Bee's bedroom, to gossip happily
and repair little ravages in their many and bewilderingly pretty
toilettes.
Bee held her tiny iron against her cheek a moment to test its heat.
"You've accounted for every one but ourselves, Doady," she said; "it
must have been one of us, or both. That is it; he likes us both so much,
and was so afraid of proposing to the wrong one, that he dashed off in a
motor-car to consider the matter in solitude."
Dora held her blouse up to the light. "I believe I'm making it worse,"
she said, pensively regarding the spot. Then she poured out a little
more benzine and fell to rubbing the place again.
"What shall you say if he proposes to you, Bee?"
Bee ironed out with much deliberation the blue chiffon hat strings that
made her a joy to all beholders.
"I haven't _quite_ decided," she said thoughtfully; "I might say
briskly, 'With much pleasure, my dear Mr. Kinross.' Or I might put my
finger in my mouth and hang back a little time."
"But you would accept him, Bee?"
"Oh, of course," said Bee; "wouldn't you?"
"I--I suppose so," said Dora.
Then both girls sighed.
"I wish he hadn't started to go bald," Bee said pathetically.
"I wish he hadn't started to grow stout," Dora added.
Bee pulled herself together.
"Charlie and Graham may be stout themselves by the time they are his
age," she said.
Dora felt obliged to follow suit.
"And of course you can't expect an author to have as much hair as--as
Charlie, for instance, can you?" she said.
"Oh, Charlie, Charlie!" sighed Bee. "But what shall you say if it is
_you_ he wants, Dora?"
Dora looked absolutely nervous.
"Oh, Bee--tell me, for goodness' sake, so I can be ready. Oh, I wish you
could be there to help me, if he does. I _know_ I shall just giggle."
"You mean 'should,'" said Bee calmly. "You know it is quite probable
that it is I he likes."
"Oh, yes, of course, Bee, you know that is what I mean," said the
younger girl; "but do tell me what to say. I should want him to
understand distinctly that I couldn't think of being married for ages.
Oh, Bee, I must have a bit more fun. Don't you feel like that?"
"Oh, yes, that's all very well, Do," said Bee gloomily, "but it is quite
time we were engaged. It is a very serious matter and we must face it."
They faced it, sitting side by side on the edge of the narrow hotel bed,
with their pretty little feet in their high-heeled shoes dangling
several inches from the ground.
"I am nineteen now," Bee continued, "and I can see plainly if you don't
get engaged by the time you are as old as that there is very little
chance for you nowadays. Look at my sisters, four of them older than I
and not one of them engaged. And poor old Floss is thirty-four--though
of course that's a secret, Dora."
"Oh, of course," said Dora.
"Well, I'm not going to take any risks," continued Bee; "I decided that
before I left school last year. Five disengaged Miss Kings are too
frightful to contemplate. I shall not be as particular as the girls
have been; Floss threw away one excellent chance just because the man
was only five feet."
"Oh, Bee," said Dora pathetically, "of course she did! Five feet! Why, I
am five feet!"
Bee shook her wise head.
"If there aren't enough six-foot men to go round you've got to put up
with the five-foot ones," she said inexorably. "I have quite decided
that the first real man who asks me I shall accept. I don't mean silly
boys like Charlie and Graham, of course, who are only just starting
their medical course and then have to buy a practice and make it pay
before they can marry. Why, we should have crow's-feet round our eyes,
and thin, scraggy necks"--she passed a hand over her plump young
neck--"and be left to sit out at dances, if we waited for _them_!"
"I--I suppose so, Bee," said Dora faintly.
"Now, Dora!" said Bee sternly, "this won't do. I saw you trying to hide
the address on the envelope you posted this morning. You've written
another letter to that Graham."
"It was a very short one, Bee," said Dora meekly.
"Well, it won't do. Do, dear, you be guided by me and you will live to
thank me," said Beatrice.
"But, Bee," began Dora imploringly, "it is not _quite_ the same with me
as with you, is it? I'm only seventeen, and I'm the eldest. Don't you
think I could have just a little more fun?"
But the marvellous product of a worldly mother and a fashionable
boarding-school shook her pretty head vigorously.
"It's every bit as serious for you, Dora," she said. "Look at you, your
father's only a barrister, and you know you don't get a big dress
allowance, and there are lots of things you can't go to for want of
money. Then you have three sisters coming on. You owe it to them to
marry early and get out of the way. If Floss had taken that man----"
"The five-foot one?"
"Yes, certainly--don't be so frivolous, Dora--I repeat if Floss had
married--he was well off and clever, and really very nice, she owns--the
chances are the other three girls would have gone off early and been the
heads of beautiful homes to-day instead of dragging the rounds of season
after season and making me stay up at school till I simply refused point
blank to keep my hair down another day."
Dora heaved a submissive sigh. Those three chubby, pretty little sisters
of hers at home were very dear to her. And it was true they were "coming
on;" Amy, the eldest of them was thirteen. She would not stand in their
light.
"There's one thing," she said a little more hopefully, "I'm sure it
won't be me--he talks to you a lot more, Bee."
"That's only because I talk a lot more to him," said Bee, nipping the
hope. "I notice he looks at you most."
Dora gazed at herself in the glass, and the reflection of the young
rounded face and the candid eyes and the pretty hair was so pleasing
that the instinct of conquest braced her.
"After all, Bee," she said more brightly, "he is really _very_ nice. And
except when you're behind him you don't notice he's going bald. Perhaps
he's a man you'd get to like a good deal after you were married to him."
"That's what I feel," said Bee, and added in an extremely virtuous tone,
"if I didn't I should not think of him for one minute. How girls can
marry really old men or horrid men, I simply don't know. I think it's
just disgraceful. But with Hugh Kinross it is _very_ different and
people think a lot of you if your husband's an author and you get asked
_everywhere_."
She returned energetically to her chiffon and twisted it in a most
artistic fashion upon a charming hat.
[Illustration: "She returned energetically to her chiffon, and twisted
it in a most artistic fashion."]
Dora jumped down also from the bed and began to collect her own
belongings. Then she stopped short one second; pretty as she was she had
a latent sense of humour.
"It would be rather funny, Bee, after all this talk if he'd never given
either of us a serious thought," she said. "What makes you so sure?"
"Oh, lots of things," said Miss Bee. "Look at the chocolates and things
he brings us--and didn't he make Mrs. Gowan ask us to join his party for
the Caves? And look at the things he says actually to us--that
quotation, for instance, when we were on the seat in the
summer-house,--"
"'How happy could I be with either,
Were t'other dear charmer away!'"
murmured Dora softly.
"Yes, and lots of things like that. A man of his age doesn't say them as
Charlie or Graham might. Love is a much more serious thing with a real
man than with a boy."
"Yes, I suppose so," sighed Dora.
"And don't you remember what Effie Gowan told us she had heard her
mother laughing and telling her father? That when he asks after us he
always says, 'Well, how are the ducky little girls?' Or else, 'When are
you going to bring the little pets down?'"
"Y-yes," said Dora, "yes, I suppose he must be serious then--as he's not
a boy."
"And Mrs. Gowan told me privately that she really did hope Hugh would
marry and that she thought a bright young wife would do him a world of
good and get him out of all his old-fashioned ways. Said it meaningly,
too."
"Oh, well," said Dora, "I had better go. It must be nearly time to dress
for dinner. What are you going to wear, Bee?"
And Hugh was promptly shelved to permit of this more important point
being properly discussed.