Part 5 (1/2)

”Good enough!” He applauded noiselessly, with fat hands. His diamond ring sparkled, his even white teeth flashed. ”I've had twenty years of galloping about,” he informed her, unable, after all, to transfer his interests from himself to her.

”Where?” she asked, although she knew.

”South America. Central America. Mexico. Panama.” He searched his memory. ”Colombo,” he superadded.

”My!” said Lulu. She had probably never in her life had the least desire to see any of these places. She did not want to see them now. But she wanted pa.s.sionately to meet her companion's mind.

”It's the life,” he informed her.

”Must be,” Lulu breathed. ”I----” she tried, and gave it up.

”Where you been mostly?” he asked at last.

By this unprecedented interest in her doings she was thrown into a pa.s.sion of excitement.

”Here,” she said. ”I've always been here. Fifteen years with Ina. Before that we lived in the country.”

He listened sympathetically now, his head well on one side. He watched her veined hands pinch at the pies. ”Poor old girl,” he was thinking.

”Is it Miss Lulu Bett?” he abruptly inquired. ”Or Mrs.?”

Lulu flushed in anguish.

”Miss,” she said low, as one who confesses the extremity of failure.

Then from unplumbed depths another Lulu abruptly spoke up. ”From choice,” she said.

He shouted with laughter.

”You bet! Oh, you bet!” he cried. ”Never doubted it.” He made his palms taut and drummed on the table. ”Say!” he said.

Lulu glowed, quickened, smiled. Her face was another face.

”Which kind of a Mr. are you?” she heard herself ask, and his shoutings redoubled. Well! Who would have thought it of her?

”Never give myself away,” he a.s.sured her. ”Say, by George, I never thought of that before! There's no telling whether a man's married or not, by his name!”

”It don't matter,” said Lulu.

”Why not?”

”Not so many people want to know.”

Again he laughed. This laughter was intoxicating to Lulu. No one ever laughed at what she said save Herbert, who laughed at _her_. ”Go it, old girl!” Ninian was thinking, but this did not appear.

The child Monona now arrived, banging the front gate and hurling herself round the house on the board walk, catching the toe of one foot in the heel of the other and blundering forward, head down, her short, straight hair flapping over her face. She landed flat-footed on the porch. She began to speak, using a ridiculous perversion of words, scarcely articulate, then in vogue in her group. And,

”Whose dog?” she shrieked.

Ninian looked over his shoulder, held out his hand, finished something that he was saying to Lulu. Monona came to him readily enough, staring, loose-lipped.