“Oh, very well,” I said. “I will withdraw my presence and my voice.”
So I did. I ran up to my room, and I found that pink gingham I used to wear up at Sunset Gap, and the funny little sunbonnet you used to think too becoming for a school-teacher. I put on the pink dress, though it was halfway up to my knees; I let my hair down my back in braids, and pulled the sunbonnet over it. Then I waited till I knew grandmother was sitting for her painter and I got Semmy to go down and knock on the door and call Mr. Painter out for a minute.
In that minute I ran in, kissed madam grandmother and bribed her to get behind a screen, and when our portrait painter returned, I was on the dais looking as demure as a kitten.
He came in looking at a letter Semmy had given him, and said:
“Will you pardon me, ma’am, for one moment?” He glanced through his letter. Then he bowed, and took up his brushes again. That was when he saw me. He gave a sort of a gasp and broke into the good old, beautiful smile we used to see on him up at Sunset Gap.
“I do not like to paint a person in masquerade,” he said.
“But this,” I said, “is a return to type.”
“Are we keeping Madam Knox waiting?” he asked.
I dropped a curtsy and found grandmother behind the screen. She too, was looking not particularly well pleased.
I kissed her again and helped her up to her chair.
“Grandmother,” I explained, “was not a party to the deception which has moved you to such violent rage, Mr. O’Connor. She was taken by storm; was overcome by force of arms and a superior enemy. I withdraw. I never did see why anybody wanted to go to the Arctic regions.”
I curtsied again—twice—once to grandmother and once to him. They both looked sulky. I got into my riding habit, called for Sally McLean, the darling little mare they let me use, and went off for the rest of the morning. At noon I found myself at the house of a Ravanel—Delight Ravanel. She is a spinster, quite wrinkled and rather depressed, but she got her Christian name when she gave promise, I suppose, of other things. She asked me to stay to luncheon. I did, and found her a dear. She told me stories about who married whom and why. She proved to me that I was some sort of a cousin of hers. It was the middle of the afternoon before I started for home.