Leighton, pushing some of her work aside to make room for it and standing
over her while she bent forward to look at it.
Alma kept her place, away from the table.
"Mah goodness! Ho' exciting!" said Miss Woodburn. "May anybody look?"
"Everybody," said Beaton.
"Well, isn't it perfectly choming!" Miss Woodburn exclaimed. "Come and
look at this, Miss Leighton," she called to Alma, who reluctantly
approached.
"What lines are these?" Mrs. Leighton asked, pointing to Beaton's pencil
scratches.
"They're suggestions of modifications," he replied.
"I don't think they improve it much. What do you think, Alma?"
"Oh, I don't know," said the girl, constraining her voice to an effect of
indifference and glancing carelessly down at the sketch. "The design
might be improved; but I don't think those suggestions would do it."
"They're mine," said Beaton, fixing his eyes upon her with a beautiful
sad dreaminess that he knew he could put into them; he spoke with a
dreamy remoteness of tone--his wind-harp stop, Wetmore called it.
"I supposed so," said Alma, calmly.
"Oh, mah goodness!" cried Miss Woodburn. "Is that the way you awtusts
talk to each othah? Well, Ah'm glad Ah'm not an awtust--unless I could do
all the talking.
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