“Oh, Mr. Campion, don’t! You’re giving me a stitch in my side! But you mustn’t call my butterfly bows brown—that color’s ‘Bottled Cloves,’ if you please, Sir!”
“Live and learn! What color is this lovely dress?”
“This old rag? What color would you say?”
“Sky-blue pink!”
“Go to the foot of the class! It’s ‘Marguerite Blue,’ and Fannie’s blue is called ‘Heavy Eyes.’ ”
“They sound like drinks—‘Lady’s Smiles’ and ‘Morning-Glories.’ ”
“I’m afraid everything sounds like a drink to you fast Harvard men—I suppose you’re all dreadfully wild. I’m frightened to death of you.”
“Oh, say not so,” said Victor, looking as wild as he could.
“Did you graduate this year, Mr. Campion?”
“Well, no—”
“Oh, you’re going back!”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t think I will go back next year. The fact is, I feel as if I ought to stay here and take care of my sisters and look after the estate, you know.”
“Oh, I do think that’s wonderful!” said Lucy’s soft voice, and Lucy’s forget-me-not eyes said, “How noble you are! How noble!”
Prentice and May were cooling off in the shade, while Victor and Lucy took their places.
“More beauteous than ever, May—whose heart are you breaking now?”
“Oh, I’ve settled down to being an old maid, Prentice. I’ve decided I’d rather paddle my own canoe.”
“Tell that to the marines! Those eyes will never let you.”
She crossed her slender ankles, pulling up her skirt a little, and touched his face with the spray of heliotrope she had been holding to her lips.
“The slave brushes the flies away from the face of the Sultan,” she murmured.
“Look at that girl, Bessie!” Mrs. Hawthorn said to Mrs. Leaf. “Look at the amount of ankle she’s showing—and making such eyes at Prentice. You can see he’s laughing at her.”
“Robert was very much taken with her several years ago—I thought something might come of it, but then he lost interest, for some reason—that seems to be the way with May Campion and her young men, and I’m sure I don’t know why.”
“Don’t you, my dear? I do. She’s so distressingly eager.”
“But she’s very pretty and animated.”
“Much too animated. I’m sure she’s been told it suits her, so she’s always on the sparkle, no matter what one’s saying. I find her exhausting. And can that color be natural? I think it was a lucky escape for Robert.”
“Well, I was relieved, I must say. She gets so excited, and sort of wild looking sometimes, and there is a queer streak in the family—her cousin Mrs. Blow, went raving crazy a couple of years ago, and died from running out into a blizzard with nothing on but her nightgown; and you know anything like that makes one so nervous.”
Carpus came over the lawn with a clucking pitcher of lemonade, and they sat together on the grass, drinking and talking.
“Let me read your palm, Prentice—oh, what a trail of broken hearts I see!”
“What do you think? My cruel husband wouldn’t take me to see Bernhardt in La Dame aux Camelias! He said he was afraid my French wasn’t bad enough!”
“Are you fond of the light fantastic, Miss Hawthorn?”
“A little more lemonade, if you please—whoa, Emma!”
“Oh, my dear! Don’t mention jersey dresses! The times I’ve had getting out of mine!”
“Gracious, Maggie, how strong minded you sound! Don’t tell us you’re one of the Shrieking Sisterhood!”
Long trailing golden wings of sunlit air quivered over them—over them all—over Lucy.
And Victor, drunken with happiness, showing off to her, pretended his tennis racquet was a banjo, and strummed on it, singing:
“ ‘Ping Wing, the Pieman’s son,
Was the very worst boy in all Canton;
He ate his mother’s pickled mice,’ ”
(Screams from the ladies!)
“ ‘And threw the cat on the boiling rice,
And when he’d eaten her, said he:
“Me wonders where the mew-cat be!” ’ ”
For the first time in his life he really saw his home, because Lucy was going to see it. He nearly drove his sisters crazy.
“Maggie! Maggie! One of the calla lilies on the fountain is broken!”
“Oh, Victor! That was broken off before you were born.”
“Well, did you know that the second pine tree on the drive is nearly dead?”
It seemed to him that the whole house, the whole place, was falling to pieces, that as he looked cracks and blotches appeared on walls lightly held together by cobwebs.
Fat Lily, scarlet and streaming, hurled herself up the terraces with the lawnmower, Maggie laundered the muslin curtains and rewashed the best china with its light red seaweed pattern, May cut owls and bats and crescent moons out of dark brown paper and made a new dado of them for the parlor. And Victor, drunk with nervousness, bumped into them all, ran upstairs, forgot what he had come for, ran down again, and wished he had never been born.
The day was like an accordion. First it stretched out for ever so long, and then—swish!—it was folded up to almost nothing. If he didn’t hurry, he wouldn’t be dressed by the time they came! Even if he did hurry, it was too late now. And he tried to decide whether to wear his blue tie that really was the color of his eyes, or the raspberry-red one that stood for a passionate nature and Harvard. With shaking fingers he tied the blue, took it off, tried the red, half untied it, tied it again, looked at himself severely in the glass, took it off in a frantic hurry. He couldn’t decide, he simply couldn’t! In a panic he saw himself changing his tie all night—all his life—forever and ever, red, blue, red, blue, red, blue—
“May!”
“What?”
“Shall I wear my blue tie or my red?”
“Good gracious, I don’t care—blue!”
Oh, what a relief!
“Victor!”
“Hello!”
“Hurry yup!”
“All right!” And he sat down on the edge of his bed, his clasped hands squeezed between his knees, and lapsed into a dream of Lucy.
“Goodnight—we’ve had a lovely time! Goodnight!”
“Goodnight! Goodnight!”
“I’ll push the shutters to, May, if you’ll bolt them.”
“Do you know, Fannie’s getting fat! But her dress was
