Part 9 (1/2)
The girl, apparently, was less anxious about her father's ideas and principles than about the impression which he had made upon the young man. She had talked it over and over with her sister before they went to bed, and she asked in despair, as she stood looking at Penelope brus.h.i.+ng out her hair before the gla.s.s--
”Do you suppose he'll think papa always talks in that bragging way?”
”He'll be right if he does,” answered her sister. ”It's the way father always does talk. You never noticed it so much, that's all. And I guess if he can't make allowance for father's bragging, he'll be a little too good. I enjoyed hearing the Colonel go on.”
”I know you did,” returned Irene in distress. Then she sighed.
”Didn't you think he looked very nice?”
”Who? The Colonel?” Penelope had caught up the habit of calling her father so from her mother, and she used his t.i.tle in all her jocose and perverse moods.
”You know very well I don't mean papa,” pouted Irene. ”Oh! Mr. Corey!
Why didn't you say Mr. Corey if you meant Mr. Corey? If I meant Mr.
Corey, I should say Mr. Corey. It isn't swearing! Corey, Corey, Co----”
Her sister clapped her hand over her mouth ”Will you HUSH, you wretched thing?” she whimpered. ”The whole house can hear you.”
”Oh yes, they can hear me all over the square. Well, I think he looked well enough for a plain youth, who hadn't taken his hair out of curl-papers for some time.”
”It WAS clipped pretty close,” Irene admitted; and they both laughed at the drab effect of Mr. Corey's skull, as they remembered it. ”Did you like his nose?” asked Irene timorously.
”Ah, now you're COMING to something,” said Penelope. ”I don't know whether, if I had so much of a nose, I should want it all Roman.”
”I don't see how you can expect to have a nose part one kind and part another,” argued Irene.
”Oh, I do. Look at mine!” She turned aside her face, so as to get a three-quarters view of her nose in the gla.s.s, and crossing her hands, with the brush in one of them, before her, regarded it judicially.
”Now, my nose started Grecian, but changed its mind before it got over the bridge, and concluded to be snub the rest of the way.”
”You've got a very pretty nose, Pen,” said Irene, joining in the contemplation of its reflex in the gla.s.s.
”Don't say that in hopes of getting me to compliment HIS, Mrs.”--she stopped, and then added deliberately--”C.!”
Irene also had her hair-brush in her hand, and now she sprang at her sister and beat her very softly on the shoulder with the flat of it.
”You mean thing!” she cried, between her shut teeth, blus.h.i.+ng hotly.
”Well, D., then,” said Penelope. ”You've nothing to say against D.?
Though I think C. is just as nice an initial.”
”Oh!” cried the younger, for all expression of unspeakable things.
”I think he has very good eyes,” admitted Penelope.
”Oh, he HAS! And didn't you like the way his sackcoat set? So close to him, and yet free--kind of peeling away at the lapels?”
”Yes, I should say he was a young man of great judgment. He knows how to choose his tailor.”
Irene sat down on the edge of a chair. ”It was so nice of you, Pen, to come in, that way, about clubs.”