Charms -- Fiction; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Love stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
Here Mrs. Cartwright, still seeming to look another way, followed the
young girl's glance as it turned again to the objective that it first
had sought--to the two empty places at the long table.
"Captain Ross and Mr. Awdas have gone into Bordeaux for the day,"
commented Mrs. Cartwright. "I hope they'll bring me back the
fountain-pen ink and the 'Vie Parisienne,' and the brown darning silk
that I commissioned them to get----" and here, quickly, she turned away
as if to gaze out of the window at the little motor-boat that was making
its way up the lagoon, where the tide was high, to the wooden pier.
Actually, her movement was to avoid seeming to stare at the face of the
girl before her, where Consciousness had again flamed out into a live
and lovely red.
"So _that's_ it ..." she thought.
"I _wish_ I didn't blush!" Olwen Howel-Jones was scolding herself
angrily. "I _am_ a little idiot to blush at the sound of the man's name!
Nobody in the whole world thinks of doing such a thing nowadays; it's
like wearing your hat on the back of your head! Yet here I am, going on
like this as if it were _Eighteen_ Seventeen! I _do_ wish to goodness I
had another sort of skin. Mrs. Cartwright might easily have
_thought_----!"
But Mrs. Cartwright was talking pleasantly on about the journey to
Bordeaux; about the forest of Les Pins, the air of it....
"Such a becoming place, too," she laughed. "Makes you feel well; look
well. May I make a personal remark, Miss Howel-Jones? You yourself are
getting twice as pretty as when you came here."
"Oh, no," protested the enraptured girl. "No one could--no one has ever
called me pretty!"
"No? But they will. Perhaps you are only just growing up to it," said
Mrs. Cartwright with a very kind glance into the face opposite to her.
"So many people make a virtue of blurting out unpleasant truths; why
shouldn't one tell the truths that aren't unpleasant? Today (I saw it
when you came in) you are quite lovely. You look as if a charm had
touched you."
Little Olwen's whole heart went suddenly out in emotion and gratitude
towards the woman who had said this thing.
Only the very young can realize how much they mean--the very first
compliments to the very young girl! Especially to the very young girl in
Love; she who feels the special need of beauty, the special need of
encouragement to think herself beautiful.
And now here was a clever woman (who knew what men admired, and who had
seen so many lovely people) pronouncing her, Olwen, to be "quite
lovely."
Oh, Event!
* * * * *
As she went up after luncheon to her room--the replica of her Uncle's
study, with its parquet floor and high balconied window--she felt there
was nothing she could not have done for this Mrs. Cartwright.
To do something for other people; that was the wish that filled the
child's heart in its overflowing mood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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