Part 7 (2/2)
”What a splendid picture this is of Dr. Alex Shelby,” she called a moment later. Then catching sight of a larger one on the mantel in a silver frame, she exclaimed in surprise, ”Why, you have two of Doctor Alex.”
Gay was deep in a closet, her head between rows of dress-skirts, and she made no answer; but Roberta, perching in the window-seat, cleared her throat to attract Mary's attention, and then with an impish smile held up seven fingers and pointed in different directions to five other photographs that Mary had not yet discovered.
”One for each day in the week,” she said in a low tone. ”I'd give a good deal to see that man. He was here last spring, but I was down on the coast and missed him. I intend to make a point of staying at home next time he comes. I want to see for myself what's up. Gay pretends there isn't anything, but I have my own ideas.”
”Oh, is he coming again?” cried Mary.
Roberta's only answer was a significant nod, for Gay emerged from the closet just then.
”There's nothing in there,” she announced, ”but I've just thought of one that Lucy left here this spring. I'll ask mother where it is.”
”You see,” said Roberta as the door closed behind Gay, ”I wouldn't tease her if she'd confess anything, but she won't. Kitty Walton thinks I've guessed right too. She said that from the moment she heard about their romantic meeting she was sure something would come of it.”
”Oh, tell me about it,” urged Mary. ”I know Doctor Alex so well that I can't help being interested.”
”And do you know a place in Lloydsboro Valley called the Log Cabin?”
asked Roberta. ”A fine country home built of logs and furnished with beautiful old heirlooms? Gay's sister, Mrs. Harcourt, rented it one summer.”
”Indeed I do know it,” a.s.sented Mary. ”It is a fascinating place, with a big outside fire-place on the porch, and the front is covered with a climbing rose. We used to pa.s.s it often.”
”Well, Kitty says that the day after the Harcourts took possession, Gay put a ladder against the front of the house and climbed up on it to hang a mirror on the outside of her window-sill, the way they do in Holland.
It was one she had brought all the way from Amsterdam. And while she was up on the ladder, looking like a picture, of course, with the roses all about her and the suns.h.i.+ne turning her hair to gold, Dr. Shelby came by on horseback. She saw him in the mirror and the girls teased her about it--called it her Lady of Shalott mirror and him her Knight of the Looking-gla.s.s. Kitty says he was devotion itself to her all summer.”
What more she might have revealed was interrupted by Gay's return. She tossed an armful of dainty muslin and lace on the bed, and for a few moments all three gave their undivided attention to the trying-on process.
”I must confess it doesn't look as if it were fitted to you in perfect health,” confessed Roberta, ”but it's one of those soft clinging things that doesn't have to fit like a glove. I can pin it up on you to make it look all right, and it's so pretty with all that fine lace and embroidery that it'll pa.s.s muster anywhere.”
Gay sat down to make some slight alteration in the girdle, while Roberta invited Mary to a seat in front of the dressing-table, proposing to try her skill on her as a hair-dresser. It was all so delightfully intimate and friendly, just such a situation as Mary had longed for in her dream-castle building, that she even felt at liberty to grow a little personal with Roberta. She peeped out through the hair which now hung over her face, to watch Roberta's face reflected in the mirror opposite.
”Do you know,” she remarked with a mischievous glance, like a skye terrier peeping through its bangs, ”that I've actually lain awake nights, wondering if you'd been persuaded yet to give up that 'adorable little curl.'”
Roberta's mouth opened wide in astonishment, and she dropped the comb with which she was parting Mary's hair.
”How spooky!” she cried. ”I was just thinking about that myself. Who in the world told you anything about that?”
”Oh, I overheard the remark,” confessed Mary. ”I was on one of those hotel balconies all hidden by moon-vines when you and Gay and Mr. Wade and the officer you call Bogey came out into the court. I was so lonesome for some young person to talk to, and so close to you all that I could see the comb slipping out of Gay's hair. I didn't know who she was then. If I had I should have leaned over the railing and called to her. Wouldn't it have made a sensation?
”I'll never forget how either of you looked. She was in white with white violets, and you were in pale lemon yellow with a scarf over your shoulders that looked like a white moonbeam spangled with dewdrops. It slipped down as you started to go and see the alligators, and that Mr.
Wade drew it up for you and said what he did about the curl.”
”That was the first time he ever mentioned it,” explained Roberta. ”I thought when you spoke that you meant last night. I was going to tell Gay about it, and as long as you're so interested I don't mind telling you, too. You know Mr. Wade has been very nice to me, and I thought he was great fun until he began to get sentimental. My brother William knew him at college, and he told me what I might expect. He said 'that chap always gets sentimental with every girl he goes with.' It's a great thing to have plenty of brothers to put you wise.
”When Mr. Wade began that nonsense about wanting one of those little curls and its being the most fetching thing he had ever seen I laughed at him. But it only made him the more determined. He wrote some poetry about wearing it over his heart forever and all that sort of thing. If he only could have known how Billy and I shrieked over it! Of course I hadn't given him the slightest encouragement, or it would have been different--”
”Roberta,” interrupted Gay sternly, ”how can you say that? You know you looked at him. I saw you do it. And when you look out at anybody from under those lashes, whether you mean it or not you _do_ look flirtatious, and you know it.”
”I don't!” contradicted Roberta hotly, with boyish directness. ”I can't help the way my lashes are kinked, and I'm very sure I'm not going to pull them out to keep people from getting a wrong impression. Anyhow there's no kink in my tongue! I told him straight enough what I thought of his silly speeches. I put a stop to them last night, all right.”
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