Part 7 (1/2)

”Who, me?” he asked. ”You did that all right. Say, why in time don't you come in the other room?”

”Oh, I don't know.”

”Well, neither do I. I've kept thinking, 'Why don't she come along.'

Then I remembered the dishes.” He glanced about. ”I come to help wipe dishes.”

”Oh!” she laughed so delicately, so delightfully, one wondered where she got it. ”They're washed----” she caught herself at ”long ago.”

”Well then, what are you doing here?”

”Resting.”

”Rest in there.” He bowed, crooked his arm. ”Senora,” he said,--his Spanish matched his other a.s.similations of travel--

”Senora. Allow me.”

Lulu rose. On his arm she entered the parlour. Dwight was narrating and did not observe that entrance. To the Plows it was sufficiently normal.

But Ina looked up and said:

”Well!”--in two notes, descending, curving.

Lulu did not look at her. Lulu sat in a low rocker. Her starched white skirt, throwing her chally in ugly lines, revealed a peeping rim of white embroidery. Her lace front wrinkled when she sat, and perpetually she adjusted it. She curled her feet sidewise beneath her chair, her long wrists and veined hands lay along her lap in no relation to her.

She was tense. She rocked.

When Dwight had finished his narration, there was a pause, broken at last by Mrs. Bett:

”You tell that better than you used to when you started in telling it,”

she observed. ”You got in some things I guess you used to clean forget about. Monona, get off my rocker.”

Monona made a little whimpering sound, in pretence to tears. Ina said ”Darling--quiet!”--chin a little lifted, lower lip revealing lower teeth for the word's completion; and she held it.

The Plows were asking something about Mexico. Dwight was wondering if it would let up raining _at all_. Di and Jenny came whispering into the room. But all these distractions Ninian Deacon swept aside.

”Miss Lulu,” he said, ”I wanted you to hear about my trip up the Amazon, because I knew how interested you are in travels.”

He talked, according to his lights, about the Amazon. But the person who most enjoyed the recital could not afterward have told two words that he said. Lulu kept the position which she had taken at first, and she dare not change. She saw the blood in the veins of her hands and wanted to hide them. She wondered if she might fold her arms, or have one hand to support her chin, gave it all up and sat motionless, save for the rocking.

Then she forgot everything. For the first time in years some one was talking and looking not only at Ina and Dwight and their guests, but at her.

III

JUNE

On a June morning Dwight Herbert Deacon looked at the sky, and said with his manner of originating it: ”How about a picnic this afternoon?”

Ina, with her blank, upward look, exclaimed: ”To-_day?_”