Faithful to her promise, Miss Clendenning waited the next morning for Oliver in her little boudoir that opened out of the library. A bright fire blazed and crackled, sending its beams dancing over the room and lighting up the red curtains that hung behind her writing-desk, its top covered with opened letters--her morning's mail: many bore foreign postmarks, and not a few were emblazoned with rampant crests sunk in little dabs of colored wax. She wore a morning gown of soft white flannel belted in at the waist. Covering her head and wound loosely about her throat was a fluff of transparent silk, half-concealing the two nests of little gray and brown knots impaled on hair-pins. These were the chrysalides of those gay butterfly side-curls which framed her sweet face at night and to which she never gave wing until after luncheon, no matter who called.
The silk scarf that covered them this morning was in recognition of Oliver's sex.
She had finished her breakfast and was leaning forward in her rocking-chair, her elbows on her knees, her tiny feet resting on the fender. She was watching the fire-fairies at work building up their wonderful palaces of molten gold studded with opals and rubies. The little lady must have been in deep thought, for she did not know Oliver had entered until she felt his arm on her shoulder.
"Ah, you dear fellow. No, not there; sit right here on this cricket by my side. Stop, do not say a word. I have been studying it all out in these coals. I know all about it--it is about the mountain girl, this--what do you call her?"
"Miss Grant."
"Nonsense! What do YOU call her?"
"Madge."
"Ah, that's something like it. And you love her?"
"Yes." (Pianissimo.)
"And she loves you?"
"YES." (Forte.)
"And you have told her so?"
"YES!" (Fortissimo.)
"Whew!" Miss Clendenning caught her breath and gave a little gasp. "Well, upon my word!
You don't seem to have lost any time, my young Romeo. What does her father say?"
"He doesn't know anything about it."
"Does anybody except you two babes in the wood?"
"Yes, her mother."
"And yours? You told her last night. I knew you would."
"Not everything; but she is all upset."
"Of course she is. So am I. Now tell me--is she a LADY?"
"She is the dearest, sweetest girl you--"
"Come now, come now, answer me. They are all the dearest and sweetest things in the world. What I want to know is, is she a lady?"
"Yes."
"True now, Ollie--honest?"
"Yes, in every sense of the word. A woman you would love and be proud of the moment you saw her."
Miss Clendenning took his face in her hands and looked down into his eyes. "I believe you. Now what do you want me to do?"
"I want her to come down here so everybody can see her. If I had a sister she could invite her, and it would be all right, and maybe then her mother would let her come."
"And you want me to play the sister and have her come here?"
Oliver's fingers closed tight over Miss Clendenning's hand. "Oh, Midget, if you only would, that would fix everything. Mother would understand then why I love her, and Madge could go back and tell her people about us. Her father is very bitter against everybody at the South. They would feel differently if Madge could stay a week with us."
"Why won't her father bring her?"
"He never leaves home. He would not even take her to the mountains, fifteen miles away. She could never paint as she does if she had relied upon him.
Mother and Mr. Grant are both alike in their hatred of art as a fitting profession for anybody, and I tell you that they are both wrong."
Miss Clendenning looked up in surprise. She had never seen the boy take a stand of this kind against one of his mother's opinions. Oliver saw the expression on the little lady's face and kept on, his cheeks flushed and a set look about his eyes.
