"There are a half dozen of them waiting."
"Nice boys! But a man. Find me one, mother, and I'll marry him."
"The trouble with you and Mary," Porter informed her, "is that you
don't want a man. You want a hero."
Grace nodded. "With a helmet and plume, and riding on a steed--that's
my dream--but mother refuses to let me wander in Arcady where such
knights are found."
"I think," Constance remarked happily, "that now and then they are
found in every-day life, only you and Mary won't recognize them."
From the other side her husband smiled at her. "She thinks I'm one,"
he said, and his fine young face was suffused by faint color. "She
thinks I'm one. I hope none of you will ever undeceive her."
Under the table Leila's little hand was slipped into Barry's big one.
She could not proclaim to the world that she had found her knight, and
loved him.
Aunt Frances, very stiff and straight in her jetted dinner gown,
resumed, "I wish it were possible to give girls a dose of common sense,
as you give them cough syrup."
"Mother!"
But Aunt Frances, mounted on her grievance, rode it through the salad
course. She had wanted Grace to marry--her beauty and her family had
entitled her to an excellent match. But Grace was single still,
holding her own against all her mother's arguments, maintaining in this
one thing her right to independent action.
Isabelle, straining her ears to hear what it was all about, asked Mary,
late that night, "What upset Frances at dinner?"
Mary told her.
"Do you think I'm wrong, Aunt Isabelle?" she asked.
The gentle lady sighed, "If you feel that it is right, it must be right
for you. But you're trying to be all head, dear child. And there's
your heart to reckon with."
Mary flushed "I know. But I don't want my heart to speak--yet."
Aunt Isabelle patted her hand. "I think it has--spoken," she said
softly.
Mary clung to her. "How did you know?"
"We who have dull ears have often clear eyes--it is one of our
compensations, Mary."