Part 7 (1/2)

”Yes. I will next time. I'm sorry, Phil.” (_Phil!_) Then she turned to Maltby. ”But I wasn't spying! I just didn't know you would any of you mind.”

”We don't, really,” I said. ”Sit down, dear. You're always welcome.” I had been doing some stiff, concentrated thinking in the last three minutes, and now I had taken the plunge. ”The truth is, Susan,” I went on, ”that most children who live in good homes, who are what is called 'well brought up,' are carefully sheltered from any facts or words or thoughts which their parents do not consider wholesome or pleasant.

Parents try to give their children only what they have found to be best in life; they try to keep them in ignorance of everything else.”

”But they can't,” said Susan. ”At least, they couldn't in Birch Street.”

”No. Nor elsewhere. But they try. And they always make believe to themselves that they have succeeded. So it's supposed to be very shocking and dangerous for a girl of your age to listen to the free conversation of men of our age. That's the reason we all felt a little guilty, at first, when we found you'd been overhearing us.”

”How funny,” said Susan. ”Papa never cared.”

”Good for him!” exclaimed Maltby. ”I didn't feel guilty, for one! I refuse to be convicted of so hypocritically squeamish a reaction!”

”Oh!” Susan sighed, almost with rapture. ”You know such a lot of words, Mr. Phar! You can say anything.”

”Thanks,” said Maltby; ”I rather flatter myself that I can.”

”And you _do_!” grunted Phil. ”But words,” he took up the dropped threads rather awkwardly, ”are nothing in themselves, Susan. You are too fond of mere words. It isn't words that matter; it's ideas.”

”Yes, Phil,” said Susan meekly, ”but I love words--best of all when they're pictures.”

Phil frowned, without visible effect upon Susan. I saw that her mind had gone elsewhere.

”Ambo?”

”Yes, dear?”

”You mustn't ever worry about me, Ambo. My hearing or knowing things--or saying them. I--I guess I'm different.”

Maltby's face was a study in suppressed amazement; Phil was still frowning. It was all too much for me, and I laughed--laughed from the lower ribs!

Susan laughed with me, springing from her chair to throw her arms tightly round my neck in one big joyous suffocating hug!

”Oh, Ambo!” she cried, breathless. ”Isn't it going to be fun--all of us--together--now we can _talk_!”

VI

The following evening, after dinner, Maltby Phar, still a little ruffled by Susan's unexpected vivacities of the night before, retired to the library with pipe and book, and Susan and I sat alone together on the garden terrace. It was dusk. The heavy air of the past week had been quickened and purified by an afternoon thunderstorm. Little cool puffs came to us across a bed of glimmering white phlox, bearing with them its peculiar, loamy fragrance. Smoke from my excellent cigarette eddied now and then toward Susan.

Silence had stolen upon her as the afterglow faded, revealing the first patient stars. Already I had learned to respect Susan's silences. She was not, in the usual sense of uncertain temper, of nervous irritability, a moody child; yet she had her moods--moods, if I may put it so, of extraordinary definition. There were hours, not too frequent to be disturbing, when she _withdrew_; there is no better word for it.

At such times her thin, alert little frame was motionless; she would sit as if holding a pose for a portrait, her chin a trifle lifted, her eyes focusing on no visible object, her hands lying--always with the palms upward--in her lap. I supposed that now, with the veiled yet sharply scented dusk, such a mood had crept upon her. But for once I was mistaken. Susan, this time, had not withdrawn; she was intensely aware.

”Ambo”--the suddenness with which she spoke startled me--”you ought to have lots of children. You ought to have a boy, anyway; not just a girl.”

”A boy? Why, dear? Are you lonely?”

”Of course not; with you--and Phil!”

”Then whatever in the world put such a crazy----”