Mistress Anne | Page 8

grace of movement. But these things must be taught, and she had no one to teach her.
When at last she crept into bed beside the sleeping Peggy, she was chilled to the bone, and she was crying.
Peggy stirred and murmured.
Soothing the child, Anne told herself fiercely that she was a goose to be upset because Eve Chesley had rings and wore rose-color. Why, she was no better than Diogenes, who had fumed and fussed because Toby had taken his straw in the stable.
But her philosophy failed to bring peace of mind. For a long time she lay awake, working it out. At last she decided, wearily, that she had wept because she really didn't know any of the worth-while things. She didn't know any of the young things and the gay things. She didn't know how to dance or to talk to men like Richard Brooks. The only things that she knew in the whole wide world were--books!
CHAPTER III
In Which the Crown Prince Enters Upon His Own.
IT developed that the name of the young man with the eye-glasses was Geoffrey Fox. Mrs. Bower told Anne at the breakfast table, as the two women sat alone.
"He is writing a book, and he wants to stay."
"The little dark man?"
"I shouldn't call him little. He is thin, but he is as tall as Richard Brooks."
"Is he?" To Anne it had seemed as if Richard had towered above her like a young giant. She had scarcely noticed the young man with the eye-glasses. He had melted into the background of old gentlemen; had become, as it were, a part of a composite instead of a single personality.
But to be writing a book!
"What kind of a book, Mrs. Bower?"
"I don't know. He didn't say. I am going to give him the front room in the south wing; then he will have a view of the river."
When Anne met the dark young man in the hall an hour later, she discovered that he had keen eyes and a mocking smile.
He stopped her. "Do we have to be introduced? I am going to stay here. Did Mrs. Bower tell you?"
"She told me you were writing a book."
"Don't tell anybody else; I'm not proud of it."
"Why not?"
He shrugged. "My stories are pot-boilers, most of them--with everybody happy in the end."
"Why shouldn't everybody be happy in the end?"
"Because life isn't that way."
"Life is what we make it."
"Who told you that?"
She flushed. "It is what I tell my school children."
"But have you found it so?"
She faltered. "No--but perhaps it is my fault."
"It isn't anybody's fault. If the gods smile--we are happy. If they frown, we are miserable. That's all there is to it."
"I should hate to think that was all." She was roused and ready to fight for her ideals. "I should hate to think it."
"All your hating won't make it as you want it," his glance was quizzical, "but we won't quarrel about it."
"Of course not," stiffly.
"And we are to be friends? You see I am to stay a month."
"Are you going to write about us?"
"I shall write about the Old Gentlemen. Is there always such a crowd of them?"
"Only on holidays and week-ends."
"Perhaps I shall write about you----" daringly. "I need a little lovely heroine."
Her look stopped him. His face changed. "I beg your pardon," he said quickly. "I should not have said that."
"Would you have said it if I had not waited on the table?" Her voice was tremulous. The color that had flamed in her cheeks still dyed them. "I thought of it last night, after I went up-stairs. I have been trying to teach my little children in my school that there is dignity in service, and so--I have helped Mrs. Bower. But I felt that people did not understand."
"You felt that we--thought less of you?"
"Yes," very low.
"And that I spoke as I did because I did not--respect you?"
"Yes."
"Then I beg your pardon. Indeed, I do beg your pardon. It was thoughtless. Will you believe that it was only because I was thoughtless?"
"Yes." But her troubled eyes did not meet his. "Perhaps I am too sensitive. Perhaps you would have said--the same things--to Eve Chesley--if you had just met her. But I am sure you would not have said it in the same tone."
He held out his hand to her. "You'll forgive me? Yes? And be friends?"
She did not seem to see his hand. "Of course I forgive you," she said, with a girlish dignity which sat well upon her, "and perhaps I have made too much of it, but you see I am so much alone, and I think so much."
He wanted to ask her questions, of why she was there and of why she was alone. But something in her manner forbade, and so they spoke of other things until she left him.
Geoffrey