Mrs. Kipley was scrutinizing the back of her hand minutely, to see if it was still intact. Finding it apparently uninjured, she drew breath and looked the surprising apparition in the face. Her own relaxed to his handsome, dashing youth and to his praise.
"I guess they're about the same," she said, dryly. But John Carrington chuckled to himself. He recognized the subjugation of Mrs. Kipley.
"What will he be with the young women!" he commented, to himself, amusedly.
Then he asked the question that was consuming Mrs. Kipley:
"Ned, are those clothes the _style_ in Paris?"
The boy swung himself lightly into the big armchair beside the bed.
"They're the badge of my craft, sir," he said, good-humoredly, settling the soft cravat with deft fingers. "Don't you like them?"
"Oh, _I_ like them," said John Carrington. ("Handsome lad!" he was whispering to himself, proudly.) "But I was wondering how they would strike Yellow Dog, that's all."
"There did seem to be some little interest in my arrival," the lad admitted, gleefully.
"Sakes alive! They beat anything I ever see in all my life!" Mrs. Kipley communed with herself.
"And Elenore?" said John Carrington. "How did you leave Elenore?"
"Elenore is well, dad. She wanted to come. I think she was a little disappointed that you didn't want your daughter instead of your son."
"Yellow Dog is no place for a young lady, Ned," he said. "It was better for her to stay with her friends. I should have liked to see her, though. She's quite a woman, from her picture. Time for sweethearts, eh? Your Aunt Sarah wrote a good deal about a young Hastings. She seemed to think it might be serious."
"Aunt Sarah loves to fuss and exaggerate," he said, and there was a slight coolness in his voice. "Maiden aunts are apt to, you know," he went on, more naturally. He smiled his attractive smile once more. Whatever had perturbed him for the instant was past.
Miss Hematite Kipley, _ætat_ seventeen, coming into the room with a fragrant bowl of syringa blossoms, compared it favorably with any picture her beloved romancers had been able to conjure up.
From the moment when she had seen the picturesque figure dismount and make a rapid way into the house, she had been perishing to make this entrance, but she had restrained herself in accordance with her ideas of propriety and gentility. Miss Kipley strove to be "elegant," aided by certain open columns in respected periodicals, after which she patterned her conduct and her clothes.