The two girls entered the house, and
sat down in the professor's study, where the old gentleman (who had been
the first to meet Cornelia) sat enclouding himself with smoke, but
betraying no other symptom of his huge delight.
"But how came you to get here so soon, you dear darling?" said Sophie,
looking with lighted eyes at her sister. "We thought it would be a week
at least."
"Oh, bless your heart, I couldn't wait, you know. So awfully tired I got
of seeing new things and people. Dear me!"--and Cornelia threw herself
back in her chair and uplifted her gloved hands in a little gesture of
ineffability--"you would never imagine what a bore society is, after
all."
The professor, from his cloud, cast, unobserved, a glance of quiet
scrutiny at his daughter. A certain jaunty embroidery of tone and manner
struck him at once--she wasn't quite the same simple little woman who
had gone to New York two months ago. Well, well, they would wear off,
perhaps, these little affectations; and then, too, it was not to be
expected of her that she'd be a girl all her life. They all must needs
pass through this stage to something better--or worse: all women of pith
and passion like Cornelia.
"How did you leave Aunt Margaret?" inquired he.
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