Part 2 (1/2)
”Cast your bread upon the waters, and it will come floating back to you in time to be fed out to the next man.”
”Bad for the next man's digestion, though!” Bobby Dane commented, as he set down his empty cup. ”You needn't offer me any of your second-hand pabulum, Beatrix.”
”You probably will be in such dire straits that I shall offer you the first chance at it, Bobby,” she retorted.
”Another cup of tea, and two pieces of lemon, please,” Sally demanded.
”What is the particular appositeness of your remarks, Beatrix?”
”Mr. Arlt and Mrs. Stanley. Also the conservation of philanthropic energy.”
Sally stirred her tea with a protesting clatter of the spoon.
”Beatrix, I am glad I didn't go to college. Your mind is appalling; your language is more so. May I ask whether you are going into slumming?”
”No. Worse.”
”For the family credit, I must draw the line at the Salvation Army,”
Bobby adjured her. ”A poke bonnet and a tambourine wouldn't be a proper fruitage for our family tree.”
”What are you going to do, Beatrix?” Sally repeated. ”It is something uncanny, I know. I felt it in the air, and that was the reason I stayed until everybody else had gone. I knew you wished to confess.”
”But I didn't.”
”Not even to ease your conscience?”
”My conscience is perfectly easy.”
”But you said it was worse than slumming.”
”It is. Slumming is aristocratic and conservative; I am about to be radical.”
”Don't tell me it is spectacles and statistics,” Bobby pleaded. ”I abhor statistical women; they are so absorbed in collating material that they never listen to the point of even your best stories.”
”Not a statistic, I promise you, Bobby.”
”Nor a poke bonnet?”
”No; my choice is for toques, not pokes. Do you know Mr. Arlt?”
”Never heard of the gentleman.” Bobby's tone expressed cheery indifference, as he bent over to prod the fire.
”But you met him, Bobby.”
”It was in a crowd, then, and it doesn't signify that I've heard of him.
Who is he, Sally?”
With the freedom born of intimacy, Sally was eating up her lemon rind, and there was a momentary pause, while she shook her head. Beatrix answered the question.
”He is Mr. Thayer's accompanist, that little German who was with him at Mrs. Stanley's.”