"You're in a funny mood to-night, Mrs. Raeburn," said her daughter. "Good night." When she reached the bedroom Jenny woke up her sister. "Look here, young May, you haven't said nothing to mother, have you, about My Friend the Prince?" "Of course not, you great stupid." "Well, don't you, that's all, because I'll go straight off and live with one of the girls if you ever dared say a word about him. Mother wouldn't understand there's nothing in it." "You know your own business best," said May sleepily. "That's quite right," Jenny agreed, and began to undress herself to a sentimental tune and the faint tinkle of hairpins falling on the toilet-table. In bed, she thought affectionately of Maurice, of his gayety and pleasant manner of speech, of his being a gentleman. He must be a gentleman because he never said so. Other girls had love affairs with gentlemen, but, with one or two exceptions, she believed they were all swankers. At any rate Maurice and Colonel Walpole were different from Irene's Danby (long idiot) and Madge Wilson's Berthold (dirty little "five to two!") and Elsie Crauford's Willie (him!), all examples of swank. Still in some ways it was a pity that Maurice was a gentleman. It would never mean a wedding. Those photographs of his mother and sisters had crushed that idea. Even if he asked her to marry him, she wouldn't. Other girls might brag about their education, their schools in Paris, their better days and dead gentlemen fathers, but they were all ballet girls, not one of the Mrs. Bigmouths could get away from that fact. Ballet girls! They got a laugh in comic songs. Ballet girls and mothers-in-law! They might gabble in a corner to each other and simper and giggle and pretend, but they were ballet-hoppers. And what of it? Why not? Wasn't a ballet girl as good as anybody else? Surely as good as a stuck-up chorus girl, who couldn't dance and couldn't act and couldn't even sing sometimes. They might be fine women with massive figures or they might have sweetly pretty Chevy Chases and not mind what they did after supper, but they weren't any better than ballet girls. After all, Maurice did not look down on her. He did not patronize her. He loved her. She loved him. With that thought flooding her imagination, Jenny fell asleep and lay buried in her deep white pillow like a rosebud in a snowdrift. Chapter XVII: _Columbine Asleep_