III
Brown Pendleton, Ph.D., L.H.D., F.R.G.S., frowned as he adjusted his white tie before the mirror of the Burgesses’ best guest-room. He was a vigorous, healthy American of thirty, quite capable of taking care of himself; and yet he had been dragged submissively across the continent by a lady who was animated by an ambition to marry him to her sister, toward whom his feelings, in the most minute self-analysis, were only those of polite indifference. And the mound-builders, now that he thought of it, were rather tame after Egypt and Babylon. As he surveyed his tanned face above his snowy shirt bosom he wished that he had never consented to deliver the address at the opening of the new Historical Museum at Indiana University, which was the ostensible reason for this Western flight. As for Miss Floy Wilkinson, she was a perfectly conventional person, who had—not to be more explicit—arrived at a time of life when people say of a girl that she is holding her own well. And she was. She was indubitably handsome, but not exciting. She was the sort of girl who makes an ideal house guest, and she had walked down church aisles ahead of one after the other of her old school friends all the way from Duluth to Bangor. Mrs. Burgess had become anxious as to Floy’s future, and in convoying Pendleton to Indianapolis and planting him in her best guest-chamber she was playing her cards with desperation.
Mrs. Burgess ran upstairs to dress after a hasty cross-examination of the cook, to make sure her telegraphic order for dinner had been understood, and found her husband shaking himself into his dress coat.
She presented her back to be unhooked and talked on in a way she had.
“Well, I suppose you got Grace Whiting or Minnie Rideout? And, of course, you couldn’t have failed on Billy Merrill. I think Grace and Billy are showing signs, at last, of being interested in each other. You can’t tell what may have happened during the summer. But if Pendleton should fail—well, Billy isn’t so dull as people think; and Floy doesn’t mind his clumsiness so much as she did. Did you say you got Minnie?”
Mr. Burgess, absorbed in a particularly stubborn hook, was silent. Mrs. Burgess was afraid to urge conversation upon him lest he should throw up the job, and Floy was monopolizing the only available maid. When a sigh advertised his triumph over the last hook she caught him as he was moving toward the door.
“Did you say Minnie was coming, Web?”
“No, Gertie—no. You didn’t say anything about Minnie in your telegram; you said to get a girl.”
“Why, Web, you know that meant Grace Whiting or Minnie Rideout; they are my old standbys.”
“Well, Grace has gone somewhere to bury her uncle, and Minnie is motoring through the Blue Grass. It was pretty thin picking, but I did the best I could.”
His tone and manner left much to be desired. His wife’s trunk was being unstrapped in the hall outside and there was no time for parleying.
“Whom did you get, then? Not——”
“I got Susie,” said Burgess, shooting his cuffs.
“Susie?”
“Susie!” he repeated with falling inflection.
“What Susie?”
“Well, Gertie, to be quite frank, I’ll be hanged if I know. I haven’t the slightest, not the remotest, idea.”
“What do you mean, Web?—if you know!”
The clock on the stairs below was chiming half past six. Burgess grinned; it was not often he had a chance like this. In social affairs it was she who did the befuddling.
“I mean to say that, though her name is Susie, it’s rather more than a proper name; it’s also a common noun, and chock-full of suggestions—pleasant ones, on the whole.” She was trying to free herself of her gown, and one of the hooks caught so that he had to extricate her. Half angry, half alarmed, she seized him by his lapels, for fear he might escape before she had put an end to his foolishness. “She said her name was Parker; but I rather question it. She looks like a Susie, but the Parker is something of a misfit. For myself, I prefer to cut out the Parker.”
“Web Burgess, tell me just what you have been up to! Don’t I know this person?”
“I doubt it. And I don’t hesitate to say that it’s a loss on both sides.”
“Do you mean to tell me that at this serious crisis in all our lives, when there’s so much at stake, you’ve asked a girl to dinner in this house that we don’t know? After all my work—after——”
“After your telegram, which I interpreted literally to mean that I was to land a girl for dinner who would serve merely to emphasize Floy’s haughty grandeur, I did the best I could. Grace and Minnie were not available; Susie was. So Susie is coming.”
“Web, we’ve been married ten years and I have never had any reason to suspect you or even complain of you; but if you think you can pick up some strange girl among your admirations and bring her to my table I shall resent it; I shall not pass it lightly by!” she ended tragically.
Burgess walked to the window, drew back the curtain and peered across at the Logan house.
“I suspect that Susie’s getting into her fighting clothes. You needn’t be afraid of Susie. Susie’s entirely respectable. And, as for my relations with Susie, she hadn’t gladdened my sight an hour ago. You’d better let me send Nora to help you. It would be awkward for you not to be down when Susie comes.”
He hummed inanely, “When Susie comes! When Susie comes!” and closed the door upon her indignation.