III

BETTY'S MOTHER HEARS A STORY

"Mother-dear!" It was the voice of Betty Harris--eager, triumphant, with
a little laugh running through it. "Mother-dear!"

"Yes--Betty--" The woman seated at the dark mahogany desk looked up,
a little line between her eyes. "You have come, child?" It was half a
caress. She put out an absent hand, drawing the child toward her while
she finished her note.

The child stood by gravely, looking with shining eyes at the face
bending above the paper. It was a handsome face with clear, hard
lines--the reddish hair brushed up conventionally from the temples, and
the skin a little pallid under its careful massage and skilfully touched
surface.

To Betty Harris her mother was the most beautiful woman in the
world--more beautiful than the marble Venus at the head of the long
staircase, or the queenly lady in the next room, forever stepping down
from her gilded frame into the midst of tapestry and leather in the
library. It may have been that Betty's mother was quite as much a work
of art in her way as these other treasures that had come from the Old
World. But to Betty Harris, who had slight knowledge of art values, her
mother was beautiful, because her eyes had little points of light in
them that danced when she laughed, and her lips curved prettily, like a
bow, if she smiled.