“Didn’t she? It seemed to me I noticed——”
“No, no, no!” he exclaimed. “I only wanted to stop her a minute to say I hoped she’d help make you like it here and be as good a friend to you as she’s always been to me.”
“Of course not!” Lena interrupted. “Not more than five minutes or so! And _she’s_ the one you especially want me to be friends with! I never saw a more awful person.”
Lena shook her head, as if in despair of him for not comprehending Martha’s awfulness. “She’s just awful,” she said, implying that if he didn’t perceive for himself why Martha was awful he hadn’t a mind capable of being enlightened. “I suppose you expect me to be intimate with her father, too?”
Dan laughed desperately. “I wouldn’t be apt to ask you to be particularly intimate with anybody his age, Lena.”
“I hope not,” she said, and became rigid, looking at him with a cold hostility that was new to his experience and almost appalled him. “I was afraid you might intend to ask me to be intimate with your grandmother.”
Dan seemed to crumple; he groaned, grew red, apologized unhappily: “Oh, Lord! I was _afraid_ that’d upset you, but I kind of hoped you’d forget it.”
“‘Forget it?’ When she did it before everybody! Pawing me—croaking at me——”
“Oh, Lord!” he groaned. “I was afraid it bothered you.”
“‘_Bothered_’ me! Is that your word for it?”
“Nobody else noticed it, Lena,” he went on. “Nobody except just our family——”
“Oh, yes!” she said. “The next-door person you admire so much was one of those that took it all in. She was in at the death—_my_ death, thank you!”
“Lena, you don’t understand at all. Nobody thinks anything about anything grandma does. You see she’s a good deal what people call a ‘privileged character.’”
“‘Privileged?’ Yes! I should say she takes privileges perhaps!”
“Oh, dear me!” he sighed. “Lena, you just mustn’t mind it. You see, she belongs to two generations back, and besides I suppose most people here wouldn’t know just what to make of your puttin’ artificial colour on your face. For that matter, your own mother and sister used to be against it, even in New York, and probably people would take notice of it here a little more than they would there. I kind of hoped myself, when you got here——”