"Mother," said Ida, in a low, sympathetic tone, "I see one of your
headaches coming on. Let me bathe your head after tea."
"Ida," whispered Mrs. Mayhew, "you are so changed I don't know
you."
The young girl flushed slightly, and by a quick, warning look
checked all further remark of this tendency.
"She is indeed marvelously changed," thought Miss Burton. "I feel
it even more than I can see it. There must be some other influence
at work. Who are these friends she is visiting, and who send her
back to us daily with some unexpected grace? Yesterday it was
truthfulness--to-day an indescribable charm of manner that has
banished the element of earthiness from her beauty. I think I will
join my friend (who imagines himself something more) in the study
of a problem that is becoming intensely interesting."
"Miss Mayhew," Van Berg found a chance to say after supper, "you
are becoming a greater enigma to me than ever."
"Well," she replied, averting her face to hide the color that would
rise at his rather abrupt and pointed address, "I'd rather be a
Chinese puzzle to you than what I was."
"And I no doubt have appeared to you like a Chinese Mandarin, Grand
Turk, Great Mogul, not name self-satisfied Pharisees, and all of
that ilk.
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