Louise protested mutely. Her black eyes glowed.
"I daresay you're right, Louise. You wear pink spectacles, you see. I'm quite sure you would be appalled if any one took them off. I'm a horrid person really."
Louise looked puzzled; then the twinkle in Miss Hartill's eyes enlightened her. Miss Hartill was teasing. She laughed merrily.
"It's quite true. I'm an egoist, Louise!"
"It's not true," said Louise passionately. She was on guard in an instant, ready to justify Miss Hartill to herself and the world.
"My good child--what do you know about it?"
"Lots," said Louise, with a catch in her voice. "You're not! You're not!"
"I am." Clare leaned forward, much tickled. She could afford to attempt to disillusion Louise.... Louise would not believe her, but she could not say later that she had not been warned. But at the same time, Clare warmed her cold and cynical self in the pure flame of affection her self-criticism was fanning. "I am," she repeated. "Why do you think I came round to see you to-day?"
Louise looked up at her shyly, dwelling on her answer as if it gave her exquisite pleasure.
"Because--because you knew I was alone, and you hated me to be miserable on Christmas Day."
"You?" Clare's eyebrows lifted for a second, but a glance into the child's candid eyes dispelled the vague suspicion.... Louise and conceit were incompatible. She listened with a touch of compunction to the innocent answer.
"Not me specially, of course. Any one who was down. Only it happened to be me. I think you can't help being good to people: you're made that way." Her eyes were full of wondering admiration.
Clare was touched. She sighed as she answered--
"I wish I were. You shouldn't believe in people, Louise. I came round because--yes, you were a lonely scrap of a schoolgirl, certainly--but there were lots of other reasons. I wanted a walk and I wanted to be amused, and I wanted--and I wanted----" she moved restlessly in her chair, "All pure egoism, anyhow."
"To please you, or to punish some one else? I don't know!"
Louise enjoyed her incomprehensibility. She stored up her remarks to puzzle over later. Yet she would ask questions if Miss Hartill were in a talking mood.
"Do I know them?" (She had an odd habit of using the plural when she wished to be discreet.) She wondered who had been punished, and why, and thrilled deliciously, as she did to a ghost story. She thought that it would be terrible to have offended Miss Hartill: yet immensely exciting.... She wondered if all her courage would go if Miss Hartill were angry? She had always despised poor Jeanne du Barrie: but Miss Hartill raging would be harder to face than a mob....