Follow a Stranger

Pallas looked at Kate for a while, frowning. “No,” she said,

at last, “I want you to teach me.”

“Me?” Kate was absurdly touched. “My dear girl, I’m not fit

to black Madame Liovitch’s shoes. I really think you could

teach me rather than the other way around.”

Pallas smiled, with sudden and surprising charm. “I’ll take

the risk.”

“Why?” Kate asked curiously.

Pallas flushed. “I ... I like you. You seem honest.”

The friendship between them grew quickly. Kate had no real

friends on the staff, since she lived out, and Pallas found the

other girls far too schoolgirlish for her. She asked Kate about

her family, and was very amused by the descriptions of Sam,

Harry and John. “Sam’s a nut case,” Kate explained.

“What’s that?” asked Pallas, and when it was translated,

went off into peals of laughter.

Kate invited her to visit them and was touched by the

eagerness of the girl’s acceptance. It occurred to her to

wonder what the autocratic Marc Lillitos would think if he

knew that Miss Carter was encouraging his sheltered little

sister to visit an ordinary family. He sounded like a

tyrannical paterfamilias, a type which she had thought

extinct years ago.

When Pallas appeared at the Caulfield home she was

wearing a chic grey dress, pretty grey shoes which looked

hand-made and very expensive, and a very smart hat on

her black hair.

Sam, lounging on the carpet with his head on a cushion,

gazed at her as though at a very rare and peculiar animal.

Kate introduced her to the assembled family, and made