"I? Not the least bit, I assure you!" She blushed and gulped and ducked
her head and half hid her face behind her hand. "Not the least in the
world. Why, if I were to die to-morrow nobody would care but pa and ma
and Roger and Truesdale and Alice; well--and Rosy; yes, perhaps Rosy
would care for me--if I was dead. But nobody else; oh, dear, no!" She
stared at Mrs. Bates with a hard, wide brightness.
Mrs. Bates considerately shifted her gaze to the front of the bureau. She
ran her eye down one row of knobs: "I wonder who he is?" And up the
other: "I hope he is worthy of her."
Doubly considerate, she turned her back, too. She began to rummage among
the drawers of her old desk. "There!" she said, presently, "I knew I
could put my hands on it."
She set a daguerreotype before Jane. Its oval was bordered with a narrow
line of gilded metal and its small square back was covered with embossed
brown leather. "There, now! Do you know who that is?"
Jane looked back and forth doubtfully between the picture and its owner.
"Is it--is it--pa?"
Mrs. Bates nodded.
Jane regarded the daguerreotype with a puzzled fascination. "Did my
father ever wear his hair all wavy across his forehead that way, and have
such a thing tied around his throat, and wear a vest all covered with
those little gold sprigs?"
"Precisely. That's just the way he looked the last time we danced
together. And what do you suppose the dance was? Guess and guess and
guess again! It was this.
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