Part 6 (2/2)
She eyed me a moment as if I were elegant at her expense, but she answered my question. ”Up there in the Batignolles. I seem to make out it's worse than Merrimac Avenue.”
”Worse--in what way?”
”Why, even less where the nice people live.”
”He oughtn't to say that,” I returned. And I ventured to back it up.
”Don't you call Mr. Porterfield a nice person?”
”Oh it doesn't make any difference.” She watched me again a moment through her veil, the texture of which gave her look a suffused prettiness. ”Do you know him very little?” she asked.
”Mr. Porterfield?”
”No, Mr. Nettlepoint.”
”Ah very little. He's very considerably my junior, you see.”
She had a fresh pause, as if almost again for my elegance; but she went on: ”He's younger than me too.” I don't know what effect of the comic there could have been in it, but the turn was unexpected and it made me laugh. Neither do I know whether Miss Mavis took offence at my sensibility on this head, though I remember thinking at the moment with compunction that it had brought a flush to her cheek. At all events she got up, gathering her shawl and her books into her arm. ”I'm going down--I'm tired.”
”Tired of me, I'm afraid.”
”No, not yet.”
”I'm like you,” I confessed. ”I should like it to go on and on.”
She had begun to walk along the deck to the companionway and I went with her. ”Well, I guess _I_ wouldn't, after all!”
I had taken her shawl from her to carry it, but at the top of the steps that led down to the cabins I had to give it back. ”Your mother would be glad if she could know,” I observed as we parted.
But she was proof against my graces. ”If she could know what?”
”How well you're getting on.” I refused to be discouraged. ”And that good Mrs. Allen.”
”Oh mother, mother! She made me come, she pushed me off.” And almost as if not to say more she went quickly below.
I paid Mrs. Nettlepoint a morning visit after luncheon and another in the evening, before she ”turned in.” That same day, in the evening, she said to me suddenly: ”Do you know what I've done? I've asked Jasper.”
”Asked him what?”
”Why, if _she_ asked him, you understand.”
I wondered. ”_Do_ I understand?”
”If you don't it's because you 'regular' won't, as she says. If that girl really asked him--on the balcony--to sail with us.”
”My dear lady, do you suppose that if she did he'd tell you?”
She had to recognise my acuteness. ”That's just what he says. But he says she didn't.”
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