Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/113

 her. She wanted to cry 'Don't, don't!' to the spectre, for her fear of him was very real. Then she would shut her eyes again, and again feel painfully conscious of his devastating presence.

'Don't scold so, Ellen,' said my grandmother mildly as I very reluctantly commenced the mending of a pair of hose. 'What would Fred Graham say if he could see your dimples lost in such a cloud?...Lost in such a fog...lost in such...lost...' The words beneath the lady editoress's pen jumbled into Arabic. Abracadabra. What she wrote stared back at her. Anthony Jones, Sir Anthony, Lord Jones. Jones the Belted Earl. She glanced at the hundred painted plates from 'Hearth and Home' tacked upon her movable wall. Their perfect little faces mowed at her and they seemed to rustle their belling skirts. She pressed her hands to her ears. They no longer hurt her and she vaguely regretted their complete recovery. 'If I am in love with Anthony Jones,' she thought, 'why can't I feel the way ladies do in stories?' She inked her pen.

'I did not care what Fred Graham would think. I was an exception, truly! I had no doubt that every one of the girls was glad that it rained so that we could not go on the picnic only that they might stay at home to enjoy the exquisite felicity of darning old hose. Oh, of course! How delightful! And I began to cry.'

Miss Bigley wanted a good, stiff moral lesson.