Part 16 (1/2)

”Well, then, open the door. I want to come in.”

After a moment the door was opened and Ethel stood there in a very becoming peignoir. She looked extremely disconcerted and did her best to block the way into the room.

But that wouldn't do for Peter. ”What's all this?” he asked. ”We lock our door now, do we?”

”Yes, sometimes,” said Ethel. ”Why aren't you at the theatre?” She shot a surrept.i.tious glance towards the window, which was open.

”I've been having a talk with mother,” said Peter. ”h.e.l.lo! I see you've been trigging up your room. Frightfully swagger now, isn't it. New art, eh? You're coming on, my dear, there's no mistake about that. I'm afraid you find us all appallingly provincial, don't you?”

The broad grin on Peter's face was no new thing to Ethel. He had always pulled her leg and treated her as though she were a sort of freak. All the same, she liked his coming in and was flattered to know that he thought it worth while to bother about her. But she began to edge him to the door. He had come at a most unpropitious moment.

”Oh ho!” said Peter. ”So this's what higher education does for you? A nice mixture--cigarettes and candies--I must say. Now I know why you locked your door. With a marshmallow in one hand and an Egyptian Beauty in the other you lie on your sofa in the latest thing in peignoirs and see life through the pages of,--what?” He picked up a book from the table. ”Good Lord!” he added; ”you don't mean to say you stuff this piffle into you?” It was a collection of plays by Strindberg.

”Oh, go to the theatre!” said Ethel. ”You're being horridly Oxford now and I hate it.”

”You'll get a lot more of it before I've done with you,” said Peter.

”All the same, you look very nice, my dear. I'm very proud of you, and I hope you will do me the honour to be seen about with me sometimes. But how about taking some of that powder off your nose? If you begin trying to hide it at sixteen it'll be lost altogether at twenty.” He made a sudden pounce at her and holding both her hands so that she could not scratch, rubbed all the powder away from her little proud nose and made for the door, just missing the cus.h.i.+on which came flying after him, and took himself and his big laugh along the pa.s.sage.

Immensely relieved at being left alone, Ethel locked the door again and went over to her dressing-table, where she repaired damage with quick, deft fingers. With another glance at the window,--a glance in which there was some impatience,--she arranged herself on the settee to wait.

IX

No wonder Peter had made remarks about this room. It was deliciously characteristic of its owner. Large and airy; all its furniture was white and its hangings were of creamy cretonne covered with little rosebuds.

The narrow bed was tucked away in a corner so that the writing-desk, the sofa and the revolving book-stand--on which stood a bowl of mammoth chrysanthemums--might dominate the room. Several mezzotints of Watts'

pictures hung on the walls and a collection of framed ill.u.s.trations of the Arabian Nights, by Dulac. The whole effect was one of nave sophistication.

Through the open window the various sounds of the city's activity floated rather pleasantly. There was even a note of cheerfulness in the insistent bells of the trolley-cars on Madison Avenue and the chugging of a taxicab on the other side of the street. Before many minutes had gone by a rope ladder dangled outside the window, and this was followed immediately afterwards by the lithe and wiry figure of a boy. Wearing a rather sheepish expression he remained sitting on the sill, swinging his legs. ”h.e.l.lo!” said he. ”How are you feeling?”

”There's some improvement to-night,” said Ethel. ”Won't you come in?

Were you waiting for a signal?”

”You bet!”

He was a nice boy, with a frank, honest face, a blunt nose and a laughing mouth. His hair was dark and thick, and his shoulders square.

He was eighteen and he looked every day of it. He lived next door and was the son of a man who owned a line of steams.h.i.+ps and a French mother, who was not on speaking terms with Mrs. Guthrie, owing to the fact that the Doctor had been obliged to remonstrate about her parrot. This expensive prodigy gave the most lifelike and frequent imitations of cats, trolley-cars, newsboys, sirens and other superfluous and distressing disturbances on the window-sill of the room which was next to his laboratory. So this boy and girl--unconsciously playing all over again the story of the Montagues and Capulets--met surrept.i.tiously night after night, the boy coming over the roof and using the rope ladder--which had played its part in all the great romances. Was there any harm in him? Well, he was eighteen.

”What'll you have first?” asked Ethel, in her best hostess manner--”candies or cigarettes?”

”Both,” said the boy; and with a lump in his cheek and an expression of admiration in both eyes he started a cigarette. He was about to sit on the settee at Ethel's feet, but she pointed to a chair and into this he subsided, crossing one leg over the other and hitching his trousers rather high so that he might display to full advantage a pair of very smart socks, newly purchased.

”I hope you locked your bedroom door,” said Ethel, ”and please don't forget to whisper. There's no chance of our being caught, but we may as well be careful.”

The boy nodded and made a little face. ”If father found out about this,”

he said; ”oh, Gee! What did you do with Ellen after she bounced in last night?”

”Oh, I gave her one of my hats. I told her that if she kept quiet there was a frock waiting for her. She's safe. Now, amuse me!”