“Oh, nothing,” said Irene, with a joyful smile of self-betrayal, taking the shaving carefully out, and laying it among the laces and ribbons in her drawer.
“Hadn’t you better put it in water, ’Rene? It’ll be all wilted by morning,” said Pen.
“You mean thing!” cried the happy girl. “It isn’t a flower!”
“Oh, I thought it was a whole bouquet. Who gave it to you?”
“I shan’t tell you,” said Irene saucily.
“Oh, well, never mind. Did you know Mr. Corey had been down here this afternoon, walking on the beach with me?”
“He wasn’t—he wasn’t at all! He was at the house with me. There! I’ve caught you fairly.”
“Is that so?” drawled Penelope. “Then I never could guess who gave you that precious shaving.”
“No, you couldn’t!” said Irene, flushing beautifully. “And you may guess, and you may guess, and you may guess!” With her lovely eyes she coaxed her sister to keep on teasing her, and Penelope continued the comedy with the patience that women have for such things.
“Well, I’m not going to try, if it’s no use. But I didn’t know it had got to be the fashion to give shavings instead of flowers. But there’s some sense in it. They can be used for kindlings when they get old, and you can’t do anything with old flowers. Perhaps he’ll get to sending ’em by the barrel.”
Irene laughed for pleasure in this tormenting. “O Pen, I want to tell you how it all happened.”
“Oh, he did give it to you, then? Well, I guess I don’t care to hear.”
“You shall, and you’ve got to!” Irene ran and caught her sister, who feigned to be going out of the room, and pushed her into a chair. “There, now!” She pulled up another chair, and hemmed her in with it. “He came over, and sat down on the trestle alongside of me—”
“What? As close as you are to me now?”
“You wretch! I will give it to you! No, at a proper distance. And here was this shaving on the floor, that I’d been poking with my parasol—”
“To hide your embarrassment.”
“Pshaw! I wasn’t a bit embarrassed. I was just as much at my ease! And then he asked me to let him hold the shaving down with his foot, while I went on with my poking. And I said yes he might—”
“What a bold girl! You said he might hold a shaving down for you?”
“And then—and then—” continued Irene, lifting her eyes absently, and losing herself in the beatific recollection, “and then—Oh yes! Then I asked him if he didn’t like the smell of pine shavings. And then he picked it up, and said it smelt like a flower. And then he asked if he might offer it to me—just for a joke, you know. And I took it, and stuck it in my belt. And we had such a laugh! We got into a regular gale. And O Pen, what do you suppose he meant by it?” She suddenly caught herself to her sister’s breast, and hid her burning face on her shoulder.
“Well, there used to be a book about the language of flowers. But I never knew much about the language of shavings, and I can’t say exactly—”
“Oh, don’t—don’t, Pen!” and here Irene gave over laughing, and began to sob in her sister’s arms.
“Why, ’Rene!” cried the elder girl.
“You know he didn’t mean anything. He doesn’t care a bit about me. He hates me! He despises me! Oh, what shall I do?”
A trouble passed over the face of the sister as she silently comforted the child in her arms; then the drolling light came back into her eyes. “Well, ’Rene, you haven’t got to do anything. That’s one advantage girls have got—if it is an advantage. I’m not always sure.”
Irene’s tears turned to laughing again. When she lifted her head it was to look into the mirror confronting them, where her beauty showed all the more brilliant for the shower that had passed over it. She seemed to gather courage from the sight.
“It must be awful to have to do,” she said, smiling into her own face. “I don’t see how they ever can.”
“Some of ’em can’t—especially when there’s such a tearing beauty around.”
“Oh, pshaw, Pen! you know that isn’t so. You’ve got a real pretty mouth, Pen,” she added thoughtfully, surveying the feature in the glass, and then pouting her own lips for the sake of that effect on them.
“It’s a useful mouth,” Penelope admitted; “I don’t believe I could get along without it now, I’ve had it so long.”
“It’s got such a funny expression—just the mate of the look in your eyes; as if you were just going to say something ridiculous. He said, the very first time he saw you, that he knew you were humorous.”
“Is it possible? It must be so, if the Grand Mogul said it. Why didn’t you tell me so before, and not let me keep on going round just like a common person?”
Irene laughed as if she liked to have her sister take his praises in that way rather than another.
“I’ve got such a stiff, prim kind of mouth,” she said, drawing it down, and then looking anxiously at it.
“I hope you didn’t put on that expression when he offered you the shaving. If you did, I don’t believe he’ll ever give you another splinter.”
The severe mouth broke into a lovely laugh, and then pressed itself in a kiss against Penelope’s cheek.
“There! Be done, you silly thing! I’m not going to have you accepting me before I’ve offered myself, anyway.” She freed herself from her sister’s embrace, and ran from her round the room.
Irene pursued her, in the need of hiding her face against her shoulder again. “O Pen! O Pen!” she cried.
The next day, at the first moment of finding herself alone with her eldest daughter, Mrs. Lapham asked, as if knowing that Penelope must have already made it subject of inquiry: “What was Irene
