Pandora gave her hand to Count Otto and asked him if he thought they
should meet again. He answered that in Washington people were always
meeting again and that at any rate he shouldn’t fail to wait upon her.
Hereupon, just as the two ladies were detaching themselves, Mrs. Steuben
remarked that if the Count and Miss Day wished to meet again the picnic
would be a good chance—the picnic she was getting up for the following
Thursday. It was to consist of about twenty bright people, and they’d go
down the Potomac to Mount Vernon. The Count answered that if Mrs.
Steuben thought him bright enough he should be delighted to join the
party; and he was told the hour for which the tryst was taken.
He remained at Mrs. Bonnycastle’s after every one had gone, and then he
informed this lady of his reason for waiting. Would she have mercy on
him and let him know, in a single word, before he went to rest—for
without it rest would be impossible—what was this famous type to which
Pandora Day belonged?
“Gracious, you don’t mean to say you’ve not found out that type yet!”
Mrs. Bonnycastle exclaimed with a return of her hilarity. “What have you
been doing all the evening? You Germans may be thorough, but you
certainly are not quick!”
It was Alfred Bonnycastle who at last took pity on him. “My dear
Vogelstein, she’s the latest freshest fruit of our great American
evolution. She’s the self-made girl!”
Count Otto gazed a moment. “The fruit of the great American Revolution?
Yes, Mrs. Steuben told me her great-grandfather—” but the rest of his
sentence was lost in a renewed explosion of Mrs. Bonnycastle’s sense of
the ridiculous. He bravely pushed his advantage, such as it was,
however, and, desiring his host’s definition to be defined, inquired what
the self-made girl might be.
“Sit down and we’ll tell you all about it,” Mrs. Bonnycastle said. “I
like talking this way, after a party’s over. You can smoke if you like,
and Alfred will open another window. Well, to begin with, the self-made
girl’s a new feature. That, however, you know. In the second place she
isn’t self-made at all. We all help to make her—we take such an interest
in her.”
“That’s only after she’s made!” Alfred Bonnycastle broke in. “But it’s
Vogelstein that takes an interest. What on earth has started you up so
on the subject of Miss Day?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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