"Be sure you don't get mixed up and describe monkish fichus and gold
leaf on the bias, or you'll be everlastingly disgraced in the office."
"Never mind. I'll learn your horrid old pieces of information in a few
minutes. Do let me look at this a little longer," Lena answered so
prettily, and pointed with so dainty a finger, and glanced up so
pathetically, that Dick too became absorbed in Godey's Lady's Book.
"Weren't they frightful guys?" Lena went on. "But I dare say the men of
that time--what is the date?--1862--thought they were lovely."
"Very likely, poor men! You see they hadn't the privilege of knowing the
girls of to-day and they thought their own women were the top-notch."
"Now you are horrid and sarcastic," said Lena.
"Never a bit. I find it impossible to believe that there was ever
before so much beauty in the world. There was here and there a pretty
girl, like Helen of Troy, and they made an awful fuss over her."
"But she must have been really wonderful."
"Yes, if a girl is as much run after as that, she must either be a
raving beauty or else she lives in the far West."
"But, you know, there aren't so very many real beauties nowadays, are
there?" She glanced sidewise at him in an adorable manner.
"I can't remember more than one--or two," said Dick judicially.
Lena laughed softly.
"I think it must have been very nice to be one of the few and be made a
fuss over, instead of--"
"Instead of what?"
"Instead of having to grub and struggle for your bread," Lena
answered,--and there was a misty look in the big eyes she turned up to
him.
"Poor little girl!" said Dick. "You certainly are not of the kind who
ought to battle with the world. Haven't you any man who could shelter
you a little?"
Lena shook her head, with an air of patient suffering.
"My father is dead," she said. "He was of a good family, as you might
know by my name, but he was wounded in the war, and he never got over
it. Of course he was very young then. He wasn't married till long
afterward. He died when I was a little thing."
"That was the history of my father, too!" Dick felt a glow of kindred
experience. "See, that is his portrait over the mantel."
Lena looked very lovely and spiritual as she gazed up at the quiet face
that looked back at her, and Dick watched her. Then she drew a full
breath and turned her eyes on him.
"You are like him," she said softly, and something in her voice made the
words a thrilling tribute.
Then she added: "Yes, but he left you in comfort, and we--my mother and
I--"