Frances was quick to see that the issue was reopened. "Oh,
senorita, it isn't as you think. Do I look like--" She broke off
to cover with her hands a face in which the pink and white warred
with alternate success. "I ought not to have come. I ought never
to have come. I see that now. But I didn't think he would know.
You see, I had always passed as a boy when I wanted to."
"A remarkably pretty one, child," said Miss Carmencita, a smile
dimpling her cheeks. "But how do you mean that you had passed as
a boy?"
Frances explained, giving a rapid sketch of her life with the
Hardmans during which she had appeared every night on the stage
as a boy without the deception being suspected. She had
cultivated the tricks and ways of boys, had tried to dress to
carry out the impression, and had always succeeded until she had
made the mistake of putting on a gypsy girl's dress a couple of
days before.
Carmencita heard her out, but not as a judge. Very early in the
story her doubts fled and she succumbed to the mothering instinct
in her. She took the American girl in her arms and laughed and
cried with her; for her imagination seized on the romance of the
story and delighted in its fresh unconventionality.
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