There was something to Oldmeadow appealing in her playfulness; her confidence, when it took on this final grace, was really touching. For Mrs. Toner the light-giver he knew that he had conceived a rooted aversion. And he wondered if she would go on, over the rhubarb-tart, to tell, after the dancing on the terrace, of the death at sea. But he was spared that.
"And your father died when you were very young, didn't he, dear?" said Mrs. Chadwick, fearful of the reference to Theseus. "I think your mother must often have been so very lonely; away from home for such a great part of the time and with so few relatives."
Miss Toner shook her head. "We were always together, she and I, so we could never, either of us, be lonely. And wherever we went she made friends. People were always so much more than mere people to her. She saw them always, at once, high and low, prince and peasant, as souls, and they felt it always, and opened to her. Then, until I was quite big, we had my lovely grandmother. Mother came from Maine and it was such a joy to go and stay there with Grandma. It was a very simple little home. It was always high thinking and plain living, with Grandma; and though, when she married and became rich, Mother showered beautiful things upon her, Grandma stayed always in the little house, doing for her poor neighbours, as she had always done, and dusting her parlour--a real New England parlour--and making her own griddle cakes--such wonderful cakes she made! I was fifteen when she died; but the tie was so close and spiritual that she did not seem gone away from us."
"Rather nice to think that there are so many good and innocent people in the world, isn't it," Barney remarked, when he, Palgrave and Oldmeadow were left to their wine and cigars. It was evident that he would have preferred to omit the masculine interlude, but Oldmeadow was resolved on the respite. She had touched him because she was so unaware; but he was weary and disconcerted. How could Barney be unaware? And was he? Altogether? His comment seemed to suggest a suspicion that Miss Toner's flow might have aroused irony or require justification.
"Miss Toner and her mother seem to have found the noble and the gifted under every bush," he remarked, and he was not sure that he wished to avoid irony though he knew that he did wish to conceal it from Barney. "It's very good and innocent to be able to do that; but one may keep one's goodness at the risk of one's discrimination. Not that Miss Toner is at all stupid."