You must think all this out
in time, David. Please don't laugh in that scornful way. It hurts. I
am very serious. Your friends, your people, will welcome me gladly as
the granddaughter of Albert Portman, but will they take me, can they
accept me, as the granddaughter of Stephen Braddock? As the product of
a fashionable convent they may rejoice in me, but as the pupil of the
sawdust ring,--as Little Starbright, a thing of spangles! Ah! How
about that side of me? Who were my childhood friends and associates?
Don't misjudge me. I loved them all--I love them now. They were the
best friends and the truest. But could they ever be the friends of
your friends?"
"They are _my_ friends," he said simply, struck by her earnestness.
"Are you forgetting what they meant to me in the old days? And what was
I? A fugitive with a price on my head. A--"
"Ah, but you were different--you always had been different. You were a
Jenison. What are you going to say when some one--and there always
will be the miserable some one--reminds you that he saw your wife when
she was Little Starbright? What--"
"Don't look so miserable, Christine! If any one says that to me I
shall congratulate him.
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