Carmella Commands
“That’s good!” she answered frankly. “I thought you acted bored.”
“All the boys act bored,” he said. “That’s the way you have to act if you are anybody. But I wasn’t—not a bit. You’re—you’re—well, sort of different, you know. Will you come for luncheon again some day?”
Carmella laughed, more in surprise than in amusement.
“That’s up to your mother and my folks, whether they’d let me if she asked me.”
“Wouldn’t you like to come, if mother asks you?”
“I’d have to see about that if it happened, kiddo! Looks to me like your dad wants you.”
Dixon approached from the direction of the machine, in which Mr. Barrington was already seated.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but your father wants you, John. Didn’t you hear me honking for you?”
“I did not, Dixon,” said the boy, and Carmella’s quick ears heard the difference in his tone from his hesitating talk with her. She glanced at Dixon, and noted a slight flush under the bronze of his face. And in this subtle change of a boy’s voice she recognized another step in her education.
You commanded, it seemed, those whom you knew you could command. The trick seemed to consist in knowing whom. In her heart she felt that she knew better than did John. Dixon turned to Tommaso, standing near, and asked:
[167]
