"The last is an open insult, and the first is only dimly veiled. Now walk with me to the gate, Miss Morning-Glory." And at the gate he said, in a curious, half-sad voice, quite different from the gay bantering tone that had excited her curiosity, "You are a nice little thing," and went away.
Doris looked after him in astonishment. "Well, can you beat that?" she ejaculated. "Here I go through high school, and through college, and now when I am a grown-up old woman, and the head of a house, and the General of a mob--I get myself all mixed up in a funny business like this. Who in the world can he be? And where in the world did he come from? But he said I should see him again. I wonder what that bad little Rosalie is at now?"
And though she went immediately back to her sister, she did not forget the kind gray eyes and the kind gay voice.
"Did you have a nice time, Doris?" asked Mrs. Andrieson as they were driving swiftly homeward.
"Wonderful," said Doris in a voice of ecstatic content.
Mrs. Andrieson looked at her curiously. "I am afraid I neglected you. I had such a hard time keeping the boys from quarreling over Rosalie, and I knew you would not get into mischief."
Now that it was all over, and the excitement and the thrill were gone, Rosalie was quivering down to the very tips of her slippers. She had disgraced the manse, she had messed things up for father--and he was such a darling-- Oh, Doris should not have let her! People would think it was father's fault--she had not thought of that before, now she could think of nothing else. "He is a good man," people would say, "but he can not control his children." And he did work so hard, and was so patient--and so many times his eyes looked tired, and once in a while, but not often, he would admit that his head ached a bit.
Doris was sympathetic as always, sympathetic in that unvoiced silence that understands everything, and hurts not a single particle. She knew by instinct that Rosalie was sick at heart. So they talked of other things, and after they got into bed she said tenderly:
"You were lovely, Rosalie, and I was so proud of you. And though you were very gay and lively, you were sweet, and had a sort of Presbyterian dignity about you that made you different."