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 FLAMING

YOUTH

45

“The Scrub’s been doing a hug with Warren Graves,” announced the elder sister. “T have not.” Mona regarded the flaming face with amused pity. She did not take the news seriously. “Did you like him, Bambina?” she asked with careless sympathy. A quick, half-suppressed sob answered and surprised her. ‘He fed her up on the punch,” began Constance. “And then és “A very enterprising young man,” broke in Mrs. Fentriss. “I don’t think we'll urge him to repeat his visit, Connie.” “Exactly what I’m writing to tell him.” “Because I pinched him from you,” declared Pat in a vicious undertone. Constance laughed, but not without annoyance. “It’s likely, isn’t it!” “I made him give me the punch,” continued the accused one. “I hated it. I only took one swallow. It wasn’t his fault. He told me to go easy on it.” The defence of her possession by the girl moved Mona: it was so naively, primitively feminine. At the same time the look in the childish eyes, dreamy, remembering, unconsciously sensuous, stirred misgivings in the mother’s mind.

Conscious womanhood was perhaps going to burst upon the child explosively; was already in process of realisation, very likely. Mona recalled certain developments of her own roused and startled emotions twenty years before. Could it be as long ago as that? How vivid to her memory it still was! “Never mind,” she said in her equable tones. “I dare say the punch was too strong. And the Graves boy had more than one swallow. He didn’t hate it.”