Part 24 (2/2)
”Is not my dress charming, Mr. Brown?” she cries with charming naivete.
”Does it not become me?”
”It is as lovely as its wearer,” replied the other, with a suppressed sigh.
”Pouf! What a simile! Who dares compare me with a paltry gown?”
Then, laughing at his discomfiture, the coquette, with slow nonchalance, gathers up her long train.
”But I'll forgive you--this once,” she concedes, ”for there is positively no one to take poor little me back to the ballroom.”
And Lady Melissa slips her hand beneath Mr. Brown's arm, and glances up at him with laughing, friendly eyes...
CHAPTER VI. INFLUENCING ARTHUR
No one in Cherryvale ever got a word from Melissa about the true inwardness of the spiritual renaissance she experienced the winter that the Reverend MacGill came to the Methodist church; naturally not her father nor mother nor Aunt Nettie, because grown-ups, though nice and well-meaning, with their inability to ”understand,” and their tendency to laugh make one feel shy and reticent about the really deep and vital things. And not even Tess O'Neill, Missy's chum that year, a lively, ingenious, and wonderful girl, was in this case clever enough to obtain complete confidence.
Once before Missy had felt the flame divine--a deep, vague kind of glow all subtly mixed up with ”One Sweetly Solemn Thought” and such slow, stirring, minor harmonies, and with sunlight stealing through the stained-gla.s.s window above the pulpit in colourful beauty that pierced to her very soul. But that was a long time ago, when she was a little thing--only ten. Now she was nearly sixteen. Things were different. One now was conscious of the reality of inward inexperiences: these must influence life--one's own and, haply, the lives of others. What Missy did not emphasize in her mind was the mystery of how piety evolved from white fox furs and white fox furs finally evolved from piety. But she did perceive that it would be hopeless to try to explain her motives about Arthur as mixed up with the acquisition of the white fox furs...
No; not even Tess O'Neill could have grasped the true inwardness of it all.
It all began, as nearly as one could fix on a concrete beginning, with Genevieve Hicks's receiving a set of white fox furs for Christmas. The furs were soft and silky and luxurious, and Genevieve might well have been excused for wearing them rather triumphantly. Missy wasn't at all envious by nature and she tried to be fair-minded in this case, but she couldn't help begrudging Genevieve her regal air.
Genevieve had paraded her becoming new finery past the Merriam residence on several Sunday afternoons, but this wasn't the entire crux of Missy's discontent. Genevieve and the white fox furs were escorted by Arthur Summers.
Now, Arthur had more than once asked Missy herself to ”go walking” on Sunday afternoons. But Mrs. Merriam had said Missy was too young for such things. And when Missy, in reb.u.t.tal, once pointed out the promenading Genevieve, Mrs. Merriam had only replied that Genevieve's mother ought to know better--that Genevieve was a frivolous-minded girl, anyway.
Missy, peering through the parlour lace curtains, made no answer; but she thought: ”Bother! Everybody can go walking but me!”
Then she thought:
”She's laughing awful loud. She is frivolous-minded.”
Then:
”He looks as if he's having a good time, too; he's laughing back straight at her. I wonder if he thinks she's very pretty.”
And then:
”I wish I had some white fox furs.”
That evening at the supper-table Missy voiced her desire. There were just the four of them at the table--father, mother, Aunt Nettie and herself. Missy sat silent, listening to the talk of the grownups; but their voices floated to her as detached, far-off sounds, because she was engrossed in looking at a mental picture; a red-haired, laughing, admiring-eyed boy walking along beside a girl in white fox furs--and the girl was not Genevieve Hicks. The delights of the vision must have reflected in her face because finally her father said:
”Well, Missy, what's all the smiling about?”
Missy blushed as if she'd been caught in mischief; but she answered, wistfully rather than hopefully:
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