Tarrant came forward,
smiling. "I know about you, Miss Chancellor. I guess your father knew my
father--Mr. Greenstreet. Verena will be very glad to visit you. We shall
be very happy to see you in _our_ home."
Basil Ransom, while the mother spoke, wanted to say something to the
daughter, who stood there so near him, but he could think of nothing
that would do; certain words that came to him, his Mississippi phrases,
seemed patronising and ponderous. Besides, he didn't wish to assent to
what she had said; he wished simply to tell her she was delightful, and
it was difficult to mark that difference. So he only smiled at her in
silence, and she smiled back at him--a smile that seemed to him quite
for himself.
"Where do you live?" Olive asked; and Mrs. Tarrant replied that they
lived at Cambridge, and that the horse-cars passed just near their door.
Whereupon Olive insisted "Will you come very soon?" and Verena said, Oh
yes, she would come very soon, and repeated the number in Charles
Street, to show that she had taken heed of it. This was done with
childlike good faith. Ransom saw that she would come and see any one who
would ask her like that, and he regretted for a minute that he was not a
Boston lady, so that he might extend to her such an invitation.
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