Yet she stumbled through her lessons without bringing down too many frowns on her young shoulders, and when she sat at the improvised dinner table with a startling array of crystal glasses, goblets and small silver, and was requested to demonstrate the use of each, the social secretary nodded approval in a short time and said one day in that well-bred, monotonous voice,
“You’re so shockingly bright, Miss Precore, I’m sure there’s a scandal in the family somewhere,” laughing outright at Thurley’s embarrassment.
“Have you really had people more stupid than I?” she demanded.
“Dear, yes! My last two pupils were twins, Golda and Silva Muggins from New Mexico. It would take a regiment to count their fortunes—but their manners!” She shrugged her trim shoulders. “And yet they both are engaged and doing nicely—I’m to finish buying the trousseaux to-morrow.”
“What frightful work to teach—” Thurley began. At which the social secretary fled lest Thurley entangle her in a really human vein of conversation and endanger her poise.
Following these lessons Miss Clergy would have Thurley come into her room and have her repeat all she had learned, after which Thurley would manage to escape to her own bedroom to burst into rebellious, beautiful song. For singing at the present time seemed to be of the least importance of all the things she did!
A gymnast came each morning before breakfast and made her exercise and do folk dances, all manner of antics strange and, to her mind, ludicrous. There was a beauty doctor who did her nails and took charge of her hair and skin, showing her which colors were becoming and which were not and the test for any woman in doubt as to the proper shade to wear—to lay a strip of the proposed goods across the hair, not the throat or cheek, as women fondly delude themselves—and see if the light and effect are to be desired.
“How many teachers does one great big girl need, Aunt Abby?” Thurley said, six weeks after Hobart had told her the little story of the peanut and the banana. “How do they think one brain can remember everything? How do you know Mr. Hobart isn’t going to be disappointed after all? He has never said a word about my voice since that first day, just scales and horrid nasal exercises and that grimy little Bohemian man to take me in tow half the time.... I’m dead tired, that’s the truth—” She flung herself down in characteristic fashion beside Miss Clergy. She wanted some one to ruffle up her hair affectionately or whisper there would be a chestnut party that afternoon near Wood’s Hollow. And here the memory of Dan Birge would steal in, an unwelcome yet paramount personage, so she jumped up and ran over to the window.