Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/21

 who had been widowed for years. Of course she would be elegantly costumed and prepared to sneer at her country cousin. She would not know that Mamma and Lanice always had their accoutrements from New York. 'Dear God, I am so alone in the world, I hope to like Pauline. I hope she really meant it last year when she wanted me to live with them on Beacon Street and study art.'

' Everybody out,' yelled the captain of the train. The interested passenger presented himself blushing and looking foolish.

'Madam,' he said, 'may I not help you with your boxes?'

She had four, and a folio of her paintings, a reticule, a small carpetbag, a muff, and an armful of skirts. Shyly, but with a certain sophistication in her shyness, she accepted his offer.

'That's unnecessary,' said a positive, well-bred voice. 'The man is here. He'll attend to your baggage.'

Lanice jumped about, flushing as though her intellectual cousin had caught her amorously smirking at the stranger.

'Cousin Pauline? How good of you to come to meet me. I was beginning to feel really quite alone and in need of being met.'

'I understand,' said Pauline very clearly, and withered the trembling semi-gentleman with a well-bred Boston look. He disappeared as if by magic.

'You poor girl! Has he been annoying you all the way from Springfield? You might have spoken