Part 20 (1/2)
”They wouldn't if you didn't jerk and flirt around--”
”Flirt, indeed! Bunny! Bunny! What an idea!” She kissed him with a resounding smack, squarely upon the end of his thin nose, then flounced over to the old-fas.h.i.+oned haircloth sofa.
Now, Mr. Dreux abhorred the name of Bunny, and above all things he abominated Myra Nell's method of saluting him upon the nose, but she only laughed at his exclamation of disgust, saying:
”Well, well! You haven't told me how nice I look.”
”There is no possible hope for him,” he acknowledged. ”The gown fits very nicely, too.”
”Chloe did it--she cut it off, and sewed on the doodads--”
”The what?”
”The ruffly things.” Myra Nell sighed. ”It's hard to make a dressmaker out of a cook. Her soul never rises above fried chicken and light bread, but she did pretty well this time, almost as well as--Do you know, Bunny, you'd have made a dandy dressmaker.”
”My dear child,” he said in scandalized tones, ”you get more slangy every day. It's not ladylike.”
”I know, but it gets you there quicker. Lordy! I hope he doesn't keep me waiting until I get all wrinkled up. Why don't you go out and have a good time? I'll entertain him.”
”You know I wouldn't leave you alone.”
She made a little laughing grimace at him and said:
”Well, then, if you must stay, I'll keep him out on the gallery all to myself. It's a lovely night, and, besides, the drawing-room is getting to smell musty. Mind you, don't get into any mischief.”
She bounced up from the sofa and gave his ear a playful tweak with her pink fingers, then danced out into the drawing-room, where she rattled off a part of a piano selection at breakneck speed, ending in the middle with a crash, and finally flung open the long French blinds.
The next instant he heard her swinging furiously in the hammock.
Bernie smiled fondly, as a mother smiles, and his pinched little face was glorified, then he sighed for a third time, as he thought of Felicite Delord, and regretfully settled himself down to a dull and solitary evening. The library had long since been denuded of its valuable books, in the same way that the old frame mansion had lost its finer furniture, piece by piece, as some whim of its mistress made a sacrifice necessary. In consequence, about all that remained now to afford Bernie amus.e.m.e.nt were certain works on art which had no market value. Selecting one of these, he lit a cigarette and lost himself among the old masters.
When Norvin Blake came up the walk beneath the live-oak and magnolia trees, Myra Nell met him at the top of the steps, and her cool, fresh loveliness struck him as something extremely pleasant to look upon, after his heated, bustling day on the Exchange.
”Bernie's in the library feasting on Spanish masters, so if you don't mind we'll sit out here,” she told him.
”I'll be delighted,” he a.s.sured her. ”In that way I may be seen and so excite the jealousy of certain fellows who have been monopolizing you lately.”
”A little jealousy is a good thing, so I'll help you. But--they don't have it in them. They're as calm and placid as bayou water.”
Blake was fond of mildly teasing the girl about her popularity, a.s.suming, as an old friend, a whimsically injured tone. She could never be sure how much or little his speeches meant, but, being an outrageous little coquette herself, she seldom put much confidence in any one's words.
”Tell me,” he went on--”I haven't seen you for a week--who are you engaged to now?”
”The idea! I'm never really engaged; that is, hardly ever.”
”Then there is a terrible misapprehension at large!”
”Oh, I'm always misapprehended. Even Bernie misapprehends me; he thinks I'm frivolous and light-minded, but I'm not. I'm really very serious; I'm--I'm almost morose.”
He laughed at her. ”You don't mean to deny you have a bewildering train of admirers?”