She was interested by Miss
Allan to the point of forgetting the bottle.
"Well," she exclaimed, "I do think that odd; to have had a friend for
twenty-six years, and a bottle, and--to have made all those journeys."
"Not at all; I call it the reverse of odd," Miss Allan replied. "I
always consider myself the most ordinary person I know. It's rather
distinguished to be as ordinary as I am. I forget--are you a prodigy, or
did you say you were not a prodigy?"
She smiled at Rachel very kindly. She seemed to have known and
experienced so much, as she moved cumbrously about the room, that surely
there must be balm for all anguish in her words, could one induce her to
have recourse to them. But Miss Allan, who was now locking the cupboard
door, showed no signs of breaking the reticence which had snowed her
under for years. An uncomfortable sensation kept Rachel silent; on the
one hand, she wished to whirl high and strike a spark out of the cool
pink flesh; on the other she perceived there was nothing to be done but
to drift past each other in silence.
"I'm not a prodigy. I find it very difficult to say what I mean--" she
observed at length.
"It's a matter of temperament, I believe," Miss Allan helped her. "There
are some people who have no difficulty; for myself I find there are a
great many things I simply cannot say. But then I consider myself very
slow.
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