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