Then she stopped swinging. Somebody was coming up the path--any of the people she was mad at?--no--only Uncle Ollie. Were the Choolies mad at Uncle Ollie? She considered a moment.

"h.e.l.lo, Jane Ellen, how goes it?"

The small mouth was full of rebellion.

"Um mad!"

"Oh--sorry. What about?"

Defiantly

"Um _mad_. And the Choolies are mad--they're mad--they're mad--"

Oliver looked at her a moment but was much too wise to smile.

"They aren't mad at you, but they're mad at Motha and Aunt Elsie and Ro and d.i.c.kie and oh--evvabody!" Jane Ellen stated graciously.

"Well, as long as they aren't mad at me--Any letters for me, Jane Ellen?" "Yash."

Oliver found them on the desk, looked them over, once, twice. A letter from Peter Piper. Two advertis.e.m.e.nts. A letter with a French stamp.

Nothing from Nancy.

He went out on the porch again to read his letters, to the accompaniment of Jane Ellen's untirable chant. "The Choolies are mad" buzzed in his ears, "The Choolies, the Choolies are mad." For a moment he saw the Choolies; they were all women like Mrs. Ellicott but they stood up in front of him taller than the sky and one of them had hidden Nancy away in her black silk pocket--put her somewhere, where he never would see her again.

"Ollie, you look at me sternaly--_don't_ look at me so sternaly, Ollie--the Choolies aren't mad at you--" said Jane Ellen anxiously. "Fy do you look at me so sternaly?"

He grinned his best at her. "Sorry, Jane Ellen. But my girl's chucked me and I've chucked my job--and consequently all _my_ choolies are mad--"

XXV

That night was distinguished by four uneasy meals in different localities. The first was Oliver's and he ate it as if he were consuming sawdust while the Crowes talked all around him in the suppressed voices of people watching a military funeral pa.s.s to its m.u.f.fled drums. Mrs.

Crowe was too wise to try and comfort him in public except by silence and even d.i.c.kie was still too surprised at Oliver's peevish "Oh _get_ out, kid" when he tried to drag him into their usual evening boxing match to do anything but confide despondently to his mother that he doesn't see why Oliver has to act so _queer_ about any girl.

The second meal was infinitely gayer on the surface though a certain kind of strainedness a little like the strainedness in the pauses of a perfectly friendly football game when both sides are too evenly matched to score ran through it. Still, whatever strainedness there was could hardly have been Mrs. Severance's fault.

The impeccable Elizabeth showed no surprise at being told she could have the day and needn't be back till breakfast tomorrow. She might have thought that there seemed to be a good deal of rather perishable food in the icebox to be wasted, if Mrs. Severance were going to have dinner out. But Elizabeth had always been one of the rare people who took pride in "knowing when they were suited" and the apartment on Riverside Drive had suited her perfectly for four years. She was also a great deal too clever to abstract any of those fragile viands to take to her widowed sister on Long Island--Mrs. Severance is so good at finding uses for all sorts of odd things--Elizabeth felt quite sure she would find some use or other for these too.

Ted Billett certainly found a good deal of use for some of it, thought Mrs. Severance whimsically. It had hardly been a Paolo and Francesca _diner-a-deux_--both had been much too frankly hungry when they came to it and Ted's most romantic remarks so far had been devoted to a vivid appreciation of Mrs. Severance's housekeeping. But all men are very much like hungry little boys every so often, Mrs. Severance reflected.

Ted really began to wonder around nine-thirty. At first there had been only coming in and finding Rose just through setting the table and then they had been too busy with dinner and their usual fence of talk to allow for any unfortunate calculations as to how Mrs. Severance could do it on her salary. But what a perfect little apartment--and even supposing all the furniture and so forth were family inheritances, and they fitted each other much too smoothly for that, the mere upkeep of the place must run a good deal beyond any "Mode" salary. Mr. Severance?

Ted wasn't sure. Oh, well he was too comfortable at the moment to look gift horses of any description too sternly in the mouth.

Rose _was_ beautiful--it was Ted and Rose by now. He would like to see someone paint her sometime as Summer, drowsy and golden, pa.s.sing through fields of August, holding close to her rich warm body the tall sheaves of her fruitful corn. And again the firelight crept close to him, and under its touch all his senses stirred like leaves in light wind, glad to be hurt with firelight and then left soothed and heavy and warm.

Only now he had a charm against what the firelight meant--what it had been meaning more and more these last few weeks with Rose Severance. It was not a very powerful-looking charm--a dozen lines of a letter from Elinor Piper asking him to come to Southampton, but it began "Dear Ted"

and ended "Elinor" and he thought it would serve.

That ought to be enough--that small thing only magical from what you made it mean against what it really was--that wish that n.o.body could even nickname hope--to keep you cool against the waves of firelight that rose over you like the scent of a harvest meadow. It was, almost.

Rose had been telling him how unhappy she was all evening. Not whiningly--and not, as he remembered later, with any specific details--but in a way that made him feel as if he, as part of the world that had hurt her, were partly responsible. And to want exceedingly to help. And then the only way he could think of helping was to put himself like kindling into the firelight, and he mustn't do that. "Elinor" he said under his breath like an exorcism, but Rose was very breathing and good to look at and in the next chair.

His fingers took a long time getting his watch.

"I've _got_ to go Rose, really."

"Must you? What's the time--eleven?--why heavens, I've kept you here ages, haven't I, and done nothing but moan about my troubles all the time."

"You know I liked it." Ted's voice was curiously boyishly honest in a way he hated but a way that was one of Rose's reasons why he was here with her.

"Well, come again," she said frankly. "It was fun. I loved it." "I will--Lord knows I thank you enough--after 252A Madison Avenue it was simply perfect. And Rose--"

"Well?"

"I'm awful d.a.m.n sorry. I wish I could help."

He thought she was going to laugh. Instead she turned perfectly grave.

"I wish you could, Ted."

They shook hands--it seemed to Ted with a good deal of effort to do only that. Then they stood looking at each other.

There was so little between them--only a charm that n.o.body could say was even partly real--but somewhere in Ted's brain it said "Elinor" and he managed to shake hands again and get out of the door.

Mrs. Severance waited several minutes, listening, a faint smile curling her mouth with intentness and satisfaction. No, this time he wouldn't come back--nor next time, maybe--but there would be other times---

Then she went into the pantry and started heating water for the dishes that she had explained rea.s.suringly to Ted they were leaving for Elizabeth. There was no need at all of Elizabeth's knowing any more than was absolutely necessary.

XXVI

Mr. Severance--the courtesy t.i.tle at least is due him--seems to be a man with quite a number of costly possessions. At least here he is with another house, a dinner-table, servants, guests, another Mrs. Severance or somebody who seems to fill her place very adequately at the opposite end of the table, all as if Rose and the Riverside Drive apartment and reading d.i.c.kens aloud were only parts of a doll-house kept in one locked drawer of his desk.

The dinner is flawless, the guests importantly jeweled or stomached, depending on their s.e.x, the other Mrs. Severance an admirable hostess--and yet in spite of it all, Mr. Severance does not seem to be enjoying himself as he should. But this may be due to a sort of minstrel give-and-take of dialogue that keeps going on between what he says for publication and what he thinks.

"Well, Frazee, I'll be ready to go into that loan matter with you inside a month," says his voice, and his mind "Frazee, you slippery old burglar, it won't be a month before you'll be spreading the news that my disappearance means suicide and that the Commercial is rotten, lock, stock and barrel."

"Yes, dear," in answer to a relayed query from the other Mrs. Severance.

"The children took the small car to go to the dance." "And, Mary, if they'd ever been our children instead of your keeping them always yours, there wouldn't be that little surprise in store for you that I've arranged."

"Cigar, Winthrop?" "Better take two, my friend--they won't be as good after Mary has charge of that end of the house."

So it goes--until Mr. Severance has dined very well indeed. And yet Winthrop, chatting with Frazee, just before they go out of the door, finds it necessary to whisper to him for some reason--half a dozen words under cover of a discussion of what the Shipping Board's new move will mean to the mercantile marine. "I told you so, George. See his hands?

The old boy's failing."