He flushed deeply. To cover his
confusion--and her own--she said in her most frivolous way:
"I was thinking that if I am ever rich I shall have more pairs
of shoes and stockings and take care of more orphans than
anyone else in the world."
"A purpose! At last a purpose!" laughed he. "Now you will go
to work."
Through Gourdain she got a French teacher--and her first woman friend.
The young widow he recommended, a Madame Clelie Deliere, was
the most attractive woman she had ever known. She had all the
best French characteristics--a good heart, a lively mind, was
imaginative yet sensible, had good taste in all things. Like
most of the attractive French women, she was not beautiful,
but had that which is of far greater importance--charm. She
knew not a word of English, and it was perhaps Susan's chief
incentive toward working hard at French that she could not
really be friends with this fascinating person until she
learned to speak her language. Palmer--partly by nature,
partly through early experience in the polyglot tenement
district of New York--had more aptitude for language than had
Susan. But he had been lazy about acquiring French in a city
where English is spoken almost universally. With the coming of
young Madame Deliere to live in the apartment, he became interested.
It was not a month after her coming when you might have seen
at one of the fashionable gay restaurants any evening a party
of four--Gourdain was the fourth--talking French almost
volubly.
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