Six weeks, forty-two days since he had come two hours late to his appointment with Mrs. Herrick of the C.O.S. and wondered whether she did not sometimes pose. Six weeks since he had gone with her to the meeting and heard the rumbling of the world below the safety of his own conventional social strata. Only six weeks since he had again begun to feel the stirring of the old dreams that he had believed dead. So that now, after he left Jean in the evenings, it was hard sometimes to remember that the plans they discussed were not things he was actually doing, instead of the things he had forgotten he had ever hoped to do.
At five the Dawsons came. Mabel and Margaret retired to the end of the piazza, Squdgy was unloaded upon Puck, who obediently took him off to the play-house, and Bill Dawson, fat, moist, as bored by Gregory as Gregory was by him, did his best to start a conversation. Gregory wished he could follow Puck's example with Squdgy and give Bill a picture book. He listened, however, as well as he could, to the perspiring stockbroker's denunciation of Socialism and all "this fashionable parlor radicalism," politely assisted him to a plank of personal reminiscence and prophecy, and, with a breath of relief, saw him presently fall off the plank into the stock exchange, where he let him wallow happily in his native medium.
He was still in it, when the maid wheeled out the tea-wagon and Margaret and Mabel came to join them. Gregory knew by the look in Mabel's eyes that this was the first time Margaret had ever come in under the wire first, and, by the new respect with which she treated him, that the tenements linked him favorably with the great civic achievements of The Fortnightly, Puck brought Squdgy, delivered him to his mother as if he were a sacrifice and climbed into Gregory's lap. Nor could any frowns or suggestions that "big girls sit in chairs" dislodge her.
At last tea was over and the Dawsons went, Bill leading with the now sleeping Squdgy in his arms, Mabel and Margaret sauntering behind. They passed down the lane and disappeared. The gold in the sky dissolved to palest yellow and faint green. Crickets chirped. The earth, freshened by the coming coolness, threw back to the world, in spicy sweetness, the garnered heat of the day. Puck slept in his arms.
In the kitchen the maid finished the dishes and went across the creeping dusk to the next house. Snatches of laughter came to him and he saw the two girls come out and sit on the back steps. In a few moments the chauffeur from the big house up the road joined them, and they all went off together.
Gregory carried Puck in and laid her on her bed. Then he went into the library and switched on the light. He spread the blue-print and began again on the delayed detail. It was the last touch to the plans, and he had promised to bring it with him to-morrow night. But the weight of the day just passed pressed down upon him, and ideas came slowly. Margaret had been long in bed, when he finally drew the last line and turned out the light.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
"What on earth is the matter with you to-night? You look as if you had lost your last friend and been evicted for non-payment of rent." Jean was leaning back in her usual chair to the right of the window, drawn just far enough to keep in view the tops of the trees, beyond sight of the dry, trodden grass. Her chin tilted, she looked at him sidewise, laughing.
All day, at every interval not crowded with work, Gregory had been pushing the thought of Herrick away. The need to do this had filled him with a vague anger at Jean, and he had not intended coming to-night. But the evening had stretched so empty before him that he had come, and now he was angry that he had.
"Cheer up, it can't be as bad as all that," Jean bantered.