"I heard from Aunt Bessie not long ago," Helen stated. "She is afraid
that you will spoil your arms if you insist upon so much practising."
"The muscles of the forearm--and then one won't marry?"
"She didn't put it quite like that," replied Mrs. Ambrose.
"Oh, no--of course she wouldn't," said Rachel with a sigh.
Helen looked at her. Her face was weak rather than decided, saved from
insipidity by the large enquiring eyes; denied beauty, now that she was
sheltered indoors, by the lack of colour and definite outline. Moreover,
a hesitation in speaking, or rather a tendency to use the wrong words,
made her seem more than normally incompetent for her years. Mrs.
Ambrose, who had been speaking much at random, now reflected that she
certainly did not look forward to the intimacy of three or four weeks
on board ship which was threatened. Women of her own age usually boring
her, she supposed that girls would be worse. She glanced at Rachel
again. Yes! how clear it was that she would be vacillating, emotional,
and when you said something to her it would make no more lasting
impression than the stroke of a stick upon water. There was nothing
to take hold of in girls--nothing hard, permanent, satisfactory. Did
Willoughby say three weeks, or did he say four? She tried to remember.
At this point, however, the door opened and a tall burly man entered
the room, came forward and shook Helen's hand with an emotional kind of
heartiness, Willoughby himself, Rachel's father, Helen's brother-in-law.
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