With the habit long ago acquired of glancing wherever her ivory finger chanced to point, the grave man of the world slowly turned his head full of the weightiest cares and oppressed by the burden of innumerable responsibilities, and surveyed the cluster of velvet bows thus indicated, with a mechanical knitting of the brows.
“I pay Sarah twenty-five dollars a month and that is the result,” his wife proceeded. “Now if Paula—”
“Paula is not to come here as a waiting maid,” her husband quickly interposed, a suspicion of color just showing itself for a moment on his cheek.
“If Paula,” his wife went on, unheeding the interruption save by casting him a hurried glance over the shoulder of her own reflection in the glass, “had the taste in such matters of some other members of our family and could manage to lend me a helping hand now and then, why I could almost imagine I had my younger sister back with me again, who with her skill in making one look fit for the eyes of the world, was such a blessing to us in our old home.”
“I have no doubt Paula could be taught to be equally efficient,” her husband responded, carefully restraining any further show of impatience. “She is bright, I am certain, and ribbon-tying is not such a very difficult art, is it?”
“I don’t know about that; by the way Sarah succeeds I should say it was about on a par with the science of algebra or—what is that horrid study they used to threaten to inflict me with at the academy whenever I complained of a headache? Oh I remember—conic sections.”
“Well, well,” laughed her husband, “she ought soon to to be an expert in it then; Paula is a famous little mathematician.”