The Open Question Part 58

"What's the matter?" she said, suspiciously; "you too grand for horse-cars?"

"Not too grand, too cold."

"Put on an overcoat."

"Don't you think it's very comfortable here?"

"Yes, but Jessie Hornsey--"

"Do you know"--he laid the old book on the floor by his chair and stretched out his shapely hands to the blaze--"do you know, I think this is _much_ nicer than tea-fighting at Jessie Hornsey's."

"What if _I_ don't go, either?" said Val, with a sudden inspiration.

"Why should you?" returned Ethan, smiling.

She whipped off her hat and jacket and flung them on the sofa.

"And you're all alone," she said, in extenuation of her sudden change of front.

"Exactly."

"Do you know, you are not at all what I expected?"

"I'm very sorry."

"I used to imagine what you were like, and it wasn't at all like this."

He sat up with a look of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"How do I fall short?"

"You don't; this is _much_ better." She was staring into the fire with great gravity.

"You don't give me a flattering idea of your antic.i.p.ations," he said.

She ignored the opportunity to rea.s.sure him.

"I used to wonder so if we were never going to meet; I was so tired waiting," she said.

"Oh, then you thought on the whole you'd like to know me?"

"Well, it's a very queer feeling--the feeling I mean. I have it about Patti, too."

"Oh, Patti, too."

"You've heard her sing?"

"Yes."

"Of course, you've heard everything!" she sighed.

"What's the 'queer feeling'?"

"Well, if I've heard and thought a great deal about some one, and if they sing wonderfully, or if they write beautiful songs, and travel and do interesting things, I feel--not so much that I want to meet them as that it would be nice for them to meet me. No, you aren't taking it the way I mean. It's that I know I should appreciate them, and it must be rather nice to be _awfully_ appreciated, even if it's Patti or you. Of course you go about meeting all kinds of people, but there aren't many among them that take such an interest as I do, that know all about you when you were little, how you blacked yourself all over in the attic and brought down the door-knocker; about the Tallmadges and Henri de Poincy, and all your photographs and letters to grandma. Naturally, n.o.body _could_ take such an interest in you as your own cousin, and it used to seem such a waste that you shouldn't know us."

"I quite agree; it would have been losing a golden opportunity."

"Oh, here she is!" said Emmie, putting in her head. "I told grandma you'd gone to the party."

"No, I'm not going. It's cold; shut the door."

Emmie was proceeding to perform this operation on the inside when Mrs.

Gano called "Val." With a gesture of impatience the girl got up and went out. Mrs. Gano was standing on the threshold of the long room.

"You'll be very late for the party."

"I'm not going."

"Why not?"

"It's raining so."

"Well, I never in all my days heard you make that excuse before!"

Val traced an invisible design on the back of the hall-chair.

"Cousin Ethan was asked, too. It strikes him as being a very bad day."

"_Ethan?_ Preposterous! Why should he bother with the Hornseys?"

There was a pause. Suddenly she asked:

"Was there not an Archery Club meeting yesterday?"

"Yes, but I--I thought I wouldn't go when we had company."

"My dear child, the company need not be so much on your mind. Your father and I are quite capable of entertaining Ethan."

"Oh yes, of course."

"You are a mere child in the eyes of a man of the world, don't forget that."

Val went on making patterns. It did not escape Mrs. Gano that this was only the second time in all her days that Val had not furiously contested the injustice of looking upon her from so mean a point of view. The girl stood quite meek and reflective.

"Don't miss your party because of Ethan," added the old woman, more gently. "You have not understood. Your cousin has a great deal to occupy him in a world we do not belong to. It's of no use for us to disarrange our lives for a person who pays us a visit once in twenty years--here to-day, gone to-morrow."

"Of course not," said Val.

"There is one thing in particular that we must all be careful about."