"Ethan forgets himself," said Mrs. Gano, with low-voiced indignation. "Imagine his asking a French girl, or a young Boston lady, to come out at this hour--_while he smoked_!" If it had been while he did a little murdering, she could not have looked more horrified. "He must not think manners are superfluous here!" Val undressed by the open window, where she could smell the ascending smoke, and then she cried under the bedclothes for what seemed to her a long, long time. CHAPTER XX Val's unwonted silence and aloofness the evening before had not been lost upon her cousin. He recalled these unaccustomed manifestations the next morning, smiling to himself, and promising his jealous little relative amends. The day, scarce well begun, beheld him on the way to a discovery that he kept on making for years: while you were occupied in realizing that Val Gano was hurt or disappointed, she was apparently getting over it with such despatch that, as you approached with suitable looks of sympathy, lo! she would advance to meet your condolence with banners flying and trumpets blaring, so to speak, obliging you hurriedly to readjust your expression, in order fitly to greet a person so entirely pleased with the course of affairs. But to think Val miraculously expeditious in "getting over things" was hardly to go to the root of the matter. She did not get over disappointments; she remodelled them in her imagination till they were strokes of luck in disguise, or, at the very least, stepping-stones to some dazzling victory. As she lay in bed in the early morning, she redressed the unequal balance of the night before. After all, Julia wasn't going to have the world-resounding triumphs that awaited Val. Poor Julia! let her enjoy her little hour of drawing-room success; and Val sailed away into a realm of glory, carrying cousin Ethan in her train, and making her toilet to the sound of cymbals and hosannas. As the breakfast-bell rang, she burst open her bedroom door and went flying down-stairs three steps at a time. "What's happened?" said Ethan, as he came down behind her, reminded suddenly of his old friend Yaffti, the patron demon of the stair. All that had "happened" apparently was that Ethan had grown decrepit, else why not go toboganning down the banisters to breakfast, or turn a few somersaults along the hall by way of beginning the day? "In honor of what saint is that?" he called after her, as Val cleared the last three steps with a leap and a bound. "In honor of St. Sunshiny Morning," answered the girl, turning a radiant face over her shoulder, and waiting for Ethan to overtake her. "Thought you told me yesterday you didn't take any interest in the weather. Oh dear, no! never noticed it at all." "I don't care a bit whether the old sun shines or not; can't think what people mean, to go bleating about the bad weather as they do. As if it _mattered_?" "And yet it's 'Hurrah!' and three steps at a time for a sunshiny morning."