Part 5 (2/2)

”Oh, Rus.h.!.+” she cried. ”Of course I did. I knew exactly what they were--better than you. I even knew who they were. They live not very far from here.”

He paled and his look was frightened. ”How did you know that?” he demanded. ”How could you know a thing like that?”

”They've lived here in the Village for years,” she said, summarizing Baldy without quoting him as her authority. ”One of them used to be an ill.u.s.trator--or something--before she went--over the edge. They're two of our celebrities. One can't go about, unless he's stone blind, without picking up things like that.”

”You did know what she was, then,” he persisted, doggedly pus.h.i.+ng through something it was almost impossible for him to say, ”and yet, knowing, you asked me to leave you alone and go back to her. You wanted me to do that?”

”I didn't want you to!” she cried. ”I hated it, of course. But men--people--do things like that, and I could see how--natural it was that you wanted to. And if you wanted to, I didn't think it fair that it should be spoiled for you just because we happened to recognize each other. I didn't want you to hate me for having spoiled it. That's all.”

She gave him the minute or two he evidently needed for turning this over in his mind. Then she turned her back on the window she had withdrawn to and began again.

”I used to be just a big sister to you, of course. Ever so superior, I guess, and a good bit of a prig. And all this time over there in France with nothing but my letters and that silly picture of me in the khaki frame, I suppose you have been thinking of me, well,--as a sort of nice angel. I'm not either, really. I don't want to be either.

”I want to be somebody you feel would understand anything; somebody you could tell anything to. So that it would work the other way as well.

Because I've got to have somebody to tell things to,--troubles, and worries. And I've been hoping, ever since your letter came, that it would turn out to be you.”

”What sort of troubles?” He shot the question in rather tensely.

There was a breathless moment before she answered, but she shook it off with a laugh and her manner lightened. ”There's nothing to be so solemn about as all that. We don't want to wallow. We'll have some breakfast--only you go first and tub.”

He was too young and healthy and clean-blooded to resist the effect upon his spirits which the cold water and the fresh white bathrobe and the hot strong coffee with real cream in it produced. And the gloomy, remorseful feeling, which he felt it his moral duty to maintain intact, simply leaked away. She noted the difference in him and half-way through their breakfast she left her chair and came round to him.

”Would you very much mind being kissed now?” she asked.

His answer, with a laugh, was to pull her down upon his knee and hug her up tight in his arms. They looked rather absurdly alike in those two white bathrobes, though this was an appearance neither of them was capable of observing. She disengaged herself presently from his embrace and went to find him some cigarettes, refraining from taking one herself from a feeling that he would probably like it better just then if she did not.

Back in her own place over her coffee and toast, she had no difficulty in launching him upon the tale of his own recent experiences. What the French were like now the war was over; and the Boche he had been living among in the Coblenz area;--the routine of his army life, the friends he made over there, and so on. Altogether she built him up immensely in his own esteem. It was plain he liked having her for a younger sister instead of for an older one, listening so contentedly to his tales, ministering to his momentary wants, visibly wondering at and adoring him.

But she broke the spell when she asked him what he meant to do now.

He turned restlessly in his chair. ”I don't know,” he said. ”I don't know what the deuce there is I can do. Certainly father's idea of my going back to college and then to medical school afterward, is just plain, rank nonsense. I'd be a doddering old man before I got through--thirty years old. I should think that even he would see that. It will have to be business, I suppose, but if any kind friend comes around and suggests that I begin at the bottom somewhere--Mr. Whitney, for instance, offering me a job at ten dollars a week in his bank--I'll kill him. I can't do that. I won't. At the end of about ten days, I'd run amuck. What I'd really like,” he concluded, ”for about a year would be just this.” His gesture indicated the bathrobe, the easy chair and the dainty breakfast table. ”This, all the morning and a ball-game in the afternoon. Lord, it will be good to see some real baseball again. We'll go to a lot of games this summer. What are the Sox going to be like this year?”

She discussed the topic expertly with him and with a perfectly genuine interest, at some length. ”Oh, it would be fun,” she finished with a little sigh, ”only I shan't be there, you know. At least I don't think I shall.” Then before he could ask her why not, she added in sharper focus, ”I can't go home, Rush.”

”Can't!” he exclaimed. ”What do you mean by that?”

”Oh, nothing to make a fuss about,” she said with a frown of irritation.

”I wish you weren't so jumpy this morning,--or perhaps, it's I that am.

All I meant was that home isn't a comfortable place for me and I won't go back there if I can help it--only I am afraid I can't. That's the trouble I wanted to talk to you about.”

”I thought you liked the new stepmother,” he said. ”Hasn't she turned out well?--What am I supposed to call her, anyhow? I wanted to find out about that before I was right up against it.”

”Call her?” Mary was a little taken back. ”Why, anything you like, I should think. I've always called her Paula.--You weren't thinking of calling her mother, were you?”

”Well,” he protested, ”how should I know? After all, she is father's wife. And she must be fairly old.”

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